PlotSet LogoPlotSet
All chart types

Sunburst Chart Maker

Show a hierarchy as rings, each level radiating out from the last. Upload your categories and values, and publish an interactive sunburst chart you can embed anywhere — free.

Create a Sunburst Chart — freeSee the gallery

What is a Sunburst Chart?

A sunburst chart is a hierarchy drawn as concentric rings. The innermost ring is the top level, each ring outward is the next level down, and every arc's angle is proportional to its value — so a segment is always exactly as wide as the sum of its children. It is a donut chart that kept going. Where a treemap packs the same hierarchy into rectangles, a sunburst keeps the radial structure, which makes the levels obvious and the parent-child relationships easy to trace, at the cost of being harder to read the further out you go.

When to use a Sunburst Chart

  • The hierarchy itself is the message

    When you want the reader to see that there are three levels and how they nest, radial rings state that more plainly than nested rectangles.

  • You have two to four levels

    One level is a donut chart. Two or three is where a sunburst is at its best. Beyond four the outer rings are too thin to mean anything.

  • Readers will explore rather than measure

    Interactive sunbursts where clicking a segment zooms into its branch are genuinely good for browsing a structure — file systems, category trees, org data.

  • The top level has few categories

    A small inner ring keeps every branch identifiable by colour. A dozen inner segments and the colour scheme collapses.

When not to use a Sunburst Chart

  • Precise comparison matters

    Angles are read less accurately than lengths, and an arc far from the centre looks bigger than an equal arc near it. If ranking is the task, use bars.

  • The hierarchy is deep or lopsided

    Five levels produce hair-thin outer rings. A branch that is much deeper than its siblings makes the whole chart look broken.

  • There are many leaf categories

    Hundreds of outer segments cannot be labelled, and a chart nobody can read the labels of is decoration. A treemap handles volume better.

  • The chart will be printed small

    Sunbursts depend on interaction to be useful. Static and small, they are much weaker than the equivalent treemap or stacked bar.

How to make a Sunburst Chart

From a spreadsheet to a published chart, step by step.

01

Start from the sunburst template

Open the PlotSet sunburst template. It loads with sample data bound so you can see how parent and child rows become rings.

02

Shape your data as child, parent, value

One row per node: its name, the node it belongs to, and its value. Leave the parent blank for a top-level node. Values on parents are usually computed from the children.

03

Upload or connect your data

Import a CSV or Excel file, paste from a spreadsheet, or connect a Google Sheet so the chart can be refreshed later.

04

Colour by branch, not by level

Giving each top-level branch a hue and shading its descendants keeps the structure visible. Colouring by depth throws away the one thing colour is useful for here.

05

Publish, embed or export

Publish for a live interactive embed where hovering shows the full path and value, or export a PNG, SVG or PDF.

Start from the Sunburst Chart template with sample data already loaded, then swap in your own.

Open the template

The parts of a Sunburst Chart

Ring
One level of the hierarchy. The innermost is the root level; each ring outward is one level deeper.
Arc segment
One node. Its angular width is its value, and it always spans exactly the arc covered by its children.
Angle
The encoding for value. Because it is angle rather than length, comparisons between distant segments are approximate at best.
Radial depth
How far out a segment sits. It encodes level, not value — a common misreading worth heading off in the caption.
Branch colour
A hue per top-level category, with lighter shades going outward. This is what lets the eye follow one branch through every ring.
Drill-down
Clicking a segment to make it the new centre. It is what makes deep hierarchies workable, and why sunbursts suit screens rather than print.

Common Sunburst Chart mistakes

Too many levels

Rings past the fourth are thin slivers that cannot be labelled or clicked accurately. Truncate the hierarchy and offer drill-down instead.

Children that do not sum to their parent

The arcs will not line up and the chart quietly stops being trustworthy. Reconcile the totals, or add an explicit "other" child.

A different colour for every segment

Rainbow sunbursts hide the hierarchy they exist to show. Colour by branch and vary lightness by depth.

Using one when a treemap would do

If you have many leaves and no need for the radial metaphor, a treemap is easier to label and easier to compare. Choose the form for the data, not the look.

Sunburst Chart: common questions

Showing hierarchical part-to-whole data as concentric rings — category inside category inside category — where both the structure and the relative sizes matter.

Make your Sunburst Chart now

Free to start with 300+ templates. No credit card required.

Create a Sunburst Chart — freeAll chart types