8 Free Tools to Make Interactive Data Visualizations in 2021 — No Coding Required

You don’t need to write any code to easily create interactive data visualization.

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

When it comes to presenting data, spreadsheets and reports full of text aren’t enough to explain what we found. This is when we need data visualization to present the data in a way that helps everyone grasp difficult concepts.

In this article, I’ll show you the best free options to easily start making stunning visualizations — leaving sophisticated options like Power BI and Google Studio. I selected these 8 online tools because they’re easy to use, have great graphic design, can be produced without writing code and are free. On top of that, all of them are interactive, so the graphs are more playful and contain more detail.

Since some visualization tools come and go, I included only those that most likely would be in the market for a long time, so it’ll be worth learning them. As I mentioned before, all the tools listed don’t require writing code, but if you’re interested in learning to make visualization with code check this article.

1. Flourish

Flourish allows you to create stunning charts, maps and interactive stories. It’s straightforward and contains a template library with different visualization options.

Who should use Flourish? Anyone interested in data storytelling. The different visualization and animation options help with it.

Pros of the free version

• Apart from the usual charts and maps, you can create bar races, quizzes and carousels with Flourish.
• It’s great for storytelling. You can create impressive “scrolly” stories, with no custom code.
• It offers a lot of options to customize visualization.

Cons of the free version

• You can’t keep your data and projects private. All data uploaded is public.
• You can’t connect to live CSV or Google Sheets files in the free version.

Example

This is a bar race of the population in different countries between 1960 and 2016. You can filter out countries in specific continents by clicking on the labels.

Template available on Flourish

2. DataWrapper

Datawrapper is a tool that allows you to create interactive charts, maps and tables. No design skills are required since they already took care of the many design rules one must follow for great data visualization. On top of that, the charts, maps and tables you create with Datawrapper are readable on all devices.

Who should use DataWrapper? The tool is primarily designed for creative writers, bloggers, and journalists. In general, Datawrapper helps people produce great visuals to accompany their articles.

Pros of the free version

• You can connect to live CSV or Google Sheets files.
• The free plan allows you to create and publish unlimited charts, maps and tables.

Cons of the free version

• The free version only allows you to export graphs on PNG files.
• In case you want an upgrade, the paid plan starts at 499€/month.

Example

This scatter plot is part of an analysis where I found that The Simpsons is the best TV show to learn foreign languages like English.

3. Chartblocks

Chartblocks is part of Ceros, a cloud-based design platform that allows marketers and designers to create immersive content without writing a single line of code.

ChartBlocks helps create charts that look great quickly and easily in just a couple of minutes. Some of the types of charts available are bar, line, scatter and pie. To make a chart, you just need to create a free account.

Who should use Chartblocks? Anyone who wants to create simple data visualizations in little time.

Pros of the free version

• The process of creating charts is one of the simplest and most straightforward among all the options.
• You can make your charts private with the free version.

Cons of the free version

• Only allows up to 50 active charts.
• Only supports 50,000 monthly views.
• You can only upload CSV or Excel files. The maximum file size is 50MB.

Example

This is a simple column chart that shows the number of lines of the main Game of Thrones characters in 7 seasons. It only took a couple of minutes to create it. You can see the same plot in DataWrapper in this article. In my opinion, this looks better in DataWrapper, but Chartblocks still does a good job.

Image by author

4. Infogram

Infogram is a visualization tool that helps create beautiful content. Apart from the typical bar, line and pie chart, Infogram also allows you to create infographics and reports easily.

Who should use Infogram? People who are interested in creating more than simple visualizations.

Pros of the free version

• Unlike other options, Infogram contains animation to set objects to zoom, bounce, flip, fade, and slide effortlessly.
• You can add elements, graphics and shapes to your visualizations.

Cons of the free version

• The free version only lets you create up to 10 projects with 5 pages per project.
• Infogram has more than 550 map types for you to choose from; however, only 13 map types are available in the free version.
• The free version only allows you to keep data public.
• No data connection and live data in the free version.

Example

This is one of the free maps available on Infogram. You can add any element and animations to improve the visualization.

Maps available on Infogram

5. Chart Studio

Plotly’s powerful, web-based online chart creator. It’s an editor for creating D3.js and WebGL charts.

Who should use Chart Studio? As written on its website, Chart Studio is for everyone who creates and views charts. Data scientists, dash developers, report & slide designers and journalists are some examples.

Pros of the free version

• In case you know how to code, Chart Studio has API available for Python, R, Julia, and MATLAB.

Cons of the free version

• Limits public charts up to 1000 views per day.
• You can upload data in more than 20 file types and connect to SQL through Falcon, Plotly’s free SQL client; however, the free version only allows you to upload data from Excel and CSV files.
• You can only export in PNG and JPEG.

Example

I created this scatterplot to analyze the effect of the number of spoken words on IMDb Ratings for every episode of the TV show Avatar.

Image by author

6. Knight Lab

They offer open-source, adaptable, and lightweight tools for media makers that help tell better stories. Their data visualization tools are different from the other options. You can tell stories behind the numbers with Storyline, tell stories with maps with Storymap and timelines with Timeline.

Who should use Knight Lab? It’s mainly designed for journalism, but it can be used for anyone who likes storytelling through visualizations.

Pros of the free version

• You only need a Google spreadsheet to create timelines, storylines or storymaps.
• If you know how to code, you can dynamically create or update timelines through JSON data format.

Cons of the free version

• Unlike the other data visualization options, Knight Lab doesn’t offer the traditional charts and tables commonly used.

Example

This is a free template available on Timeline.

Timeline template

7. Tableau Public

This is one of the most popular options, but for those who never heard of Tableau Public, it’s a free platform to publicly share and explore data visualizations online. You can easily create interactive graphs, maps, and live dashboards in just minutes.

Who should use Tableau Public? For any data enthusiast who wants to create stunning interactive visualizations.

Pros of the free version

• All visualizations on Tableau Public can handle millions of viewers at no cost.
• There are lots of tutorials available on how to use Tableau.
• It has a lot of options to customize your graph.

Cons of the free version

• Visualizations published to Tableau Public are available for anyone to see online. Tableau Public is a platform for public (not private) data.
• You can import data from CSV, Excel and Google Sheets. However, you can’t connect to a database with the free version.

Example

This visualization shows Tableau Public authors from around the world.

Author: Nir Smilga‬‎. Originally published on Tableau Public

Last but not least — RAW Graphs

Although you can’t create interactive visualizations with RAWGraphs, it’s still worth mentioning. RAW Graphs aims to provide a missing link between spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel and vector graphics editors such as Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, and Sketch.

Pros of the free version

• The creation of graphs is really straightforward and you don’t even need to create an account to start working.
• Different options to upload data such as TSV, CSV, DSV, JSON and Excel (.xls, .xlsx) files.
• According to RAWGraphs, the data uploaded will be processed only by the web browser. No server-side operations or storages are performed. No one will see, touch or copy your data.
• RAWGraphs is scalable. You can add new charts with a basic knowledge of D3.js.

Cons of the free version

• The graphs are sometimes too simple and there are few ways to customize them as you want.
• The visualizations are not interactive.

Example

This visualization shows the population of some cities in a hierarchical structure.

Circle Packing — Image by author

Final thoughts

There isn’t a perfect data visualization tool. That’s why it’s a good idea to make the most of at least 2 or 3 of them since they complement each other.

Now you know 8 new tools to create amazing interactive data visualizations without writing any code. Once you master a couple of them, I recommend using data visualization libraries in your favorite programming language to customize your charts even further.

In case you code in Python, check this article to learn how to make great visualizations with Plotly, Seaborn and Matplotlib.

Avatar Meets Data Visualization

Thanks for reaching this point! You can also read this article in Spanish and Portuguese.