Here’s how to create a race bar chart without coding skills with the help of 3 free race bar chart tools. You can use these three tools offline or online to generate race bar charts and use them anywhere.
This tool fetches datasets from you to plot animated graphics and generate GIFs or publish graphics on specific links. You can generate as many bar chart races as you want and use them.
In this article I also added some open source tools that you can use locally and even host them on your own server.
Also read: How to Create PERT Charts Online
A race bar chart is an animated bar chart (can be vertical or horizontal) and usually displays a certain amount of increase/decrease over time. This animation is what makes the entire chart look like the values are racing.
You can see an example of a bar chart race in the GIF that we have added below. And you can create it from your own data in CSV/Excel format. Apart from displaying the data, you can also customize the look and feel of the chart using the controls that this tool offers.
1. Flourish Studio
Flourish Studio
is one of the best free online race bar chart generator that you can use. Here it takes the chart data of your CSV/TSV/Excel format and then generates the final chart.
It lets you host the animated chart it generates on a unique URL and embed code accordingly. However, in the free plan, you cannot download the graphics on your PC.
To customize the race bar chart, it offers you various customization tools and data editor which works as Google Sheets. You can fully customize the table data to generate a perfect race bar chart.
Using Flourish is very easy. You just go to the homepage and then create a free account. Next, from the main dashboard, you create a new project and then select a chart type.
It offers you many types of charts, because in this post we are talking about
race bar chartso just choose that.
Now, you will be taken to chart editor. Just edit the template and upload your data set. The dataset file after successful upload will be available at sheet editor. You can now specify what colors and columns you want to choose for the final animated graphic.
All the controls to do that are available on the right side. Just set the data and save. You can even preview the last race chart and then adjust the data again if you are not satisfied.
Lastly, bro publish your chart and you are given a link link. You can share that link with whoever you want to share the chart with. Moreover, it provides you with an embed code in case you want to display a graphical representation of the data on your own website.
In this way, you can use this simple and quite easy service to create and publish race bar charts. You can completely customize the resulting graphics from labels to colors.
There are several other parameters that you can set and they are all available in the chart settings. And not only race bar charts, but you can use this service to create almost any type of charts and publish them.
2. Bar Chart Race Generator by FabDev
Bar Chart Race Generator
is another tool that you can use to create a race bar chart (bar chart race) from CSV data and display it on your website. It is an open source tool and the entire codebase is available on GitHub.
It has a simple UI where you just send a CSV data set and it will generate a race bar chart for you.
It is a very easy tool and offers you several pre-ready data sets that you can use. The race bar chart that you generate with this can be added to your website and then you are free to do whatever you want. It’s that simple.
The way to use it is very easy. There is an online version of this tool hosted already available where you can try it. You just click the link above and then choose an available database. But when you want to use it on your website or server, then you have to provide your own dataset.
You can read the documentation to learn more about data sets and how to use them. Also, for the technical specifications, you can see the code.
3. Bar Chart Race using Matplotlib
Bar Chart Race using Matplotlib was the last free tool I could find and this one can be used locally. It is basically a Python library but you can create simple scripts based on the existing ones.
Just like the other tools above, it fetches a data set from you and then generates a bar chart race accordingly. The only difference here is that it outputs a GIF or MP4 file as output.
It is also open source and the animations it produces are simply amazing. There are several things that you can customize and you can easily integrate them into your Python project.
Installing this tool on PC is quite easy, no matter if you are using Windows, MAC, and Linux. You just have to run the command below and then wait for the installation to complete.
You have to make sure that you have git and Python installed before running this command. Here you also have to install ffmpeg.
python -m pip install git+https://github.com/dexplo/bar_chart_race
Now, you can just copy this script and change the data set. If you only use it for testing, leave all parameters as they are.
Now, you just have to run the script as below and wait. In the end, it will generate a GIF with a race bar chart. You are now free to use that GIF wherever you want.
In this way, you can use this simple and offline tool on your PC to generate race bar chart (race bar chart). There is official documentation about this tool as well as it lets you customize the last bar graph race.
There are many parameters that you can change in the script and you can also learn about advanced usage.
It works best with Python and if you are running heavy background applications while using this tool, then it might hang your system. So, I suggest you to use it on PC with high hardware configuration.
Those are 3 free tools that can be used to create race bar charts (bar chart races). If you have some data that you want to display based on different time periods with animation, you can use any of the ones I mentioned above.
