Data visualization is one of the steps of the data science process, which states that after data is collected, processed, and modeled, it must be visualized in order to draw conclusions.
Data visualization is important to almost every career. Teachers can use it to display test results for students, computer scientists can explore advances in artificial intelligence (AI), or executives looking to share information with stakeholders. It also plays an important role in big data projects. As businesses accumulated large amounts of data early in the big data trend, they needed a way to make sense of their data quickly and easily. Visualizers are a natural fit.
What are data visualization tools?
Data visualization tools refer to all forms of software designed to visualize data. Different tools can contain different capabilities, but the most basic data visualization tools will give you the ability to input datasets and manipulate them intuitively. Data visualization tools help you present raw data in an intuitive and easy-to-understand graphical format, enabling you to generate customizable bar charts, pie charts, Gantt charts, column charts, area charts, donut charts, and more.
Recommended data visualization tools
Tableau
The best data visualization software for creating maps and facing the public.
Tableau is a business intelligence data visualization tool that allows users to interact with data through interactive dashboards, maps, charts, and other presentation formats.
Tableau is a powerful and fastest growing data visualization tool used in the business intelligence industry. It helps to simplify raw data in a very understandable format.
infogram
A full-featured data visualization tool for non-designers and designers.
Infogram consists of more than 550 maps, 35 charts and 20 pre-designed templates, making it possible to design fully responsive and professional presentations on any device.
Data can be imported from online or PC sources, and infographics can be downloaded in HD quality, supporting multiple file types (PNG, JPG, PDF, GIF, HTML).
The drag-and-drop editor simplifies the process of creating effective visualizations for marketing reports, infographics, social media posts, and maps, allowing non-designers or novices to easily produce great-looking reports, one-pagers, and charts.
SovitChart
An excellent online building tool for data visualization applications.
SovitChart is a very good online building tool for data visualization applications. Based on Echarts research and development, it provides rich templates and graphics, supports multiple data sources, drag-and-drop layout, and supports cloud and local deployment. Through rich component libraries and template libraries, as well as intelligent auxiliary means, the construction threshold for non-professional developers is greatly reduced. Overall, it is a very good visual large-screen design product, and the personal version is free. There are also 2D configuration visualization platform - Sovit2D and 3D IoT visualization platform - Sovit3D.
Chartsblocks
The best data visualization tool to embed charts on any website.
Cloud-based chart building tool that allows any chart to be customized and synchronized with any data source, and can be shared on popular media sites.
Data can be imported from any source using its API, including live sources, and the Chart Builder Wizard helps select the best data for the chart before importing on any device of any screen size.
Control every aspect of your charts with hundreds of customization options, allowing you to configure everything from colors, fonts and sizes to grids and number scales on the axes.
Datawrapper
The best data visualization software for adding charts and maps to news stories.
Created specifically for adding charts and maps to news stories, Datawrapper is an open-source tool that supports Windows, Mac, and Linux and enables you to connect visualizations to Google Sheets.
Choose from one of 19 interactive and responsive chart types, ranging from simple bars and lines to arrows, ranges, and scatter plots, with three map types that can be used to create locator maps, thematic choirs, symbol maps, and more .
Tables feature gives you a range of styling options for responsive bar, column and line charts, heatmaps, images, search bars and pagination.
D3. js
JavaScript library for manipulating documents with data using reusable diagrams.
D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data, helping you animate data through HTML, SVG, and CSS.
The tool is extremely fast, supports large data sets and dynamic behavior of interactions and animations, enabling you to generate HTML tables from numeric arrays or use the same data to create interactive SVG bar charts with smooth transitions and interactions.
While the platform requires some JavaScript knowledge, applications like NVD3 allow non-programmers to use the library, providing reusable charts and chart components without taking away the power of D3.js.
Domo
The best data visualization software for companies with BI experience.
Domo is a cloud platform with powerful BI tools, with a large number of data connectors and powerful data visualization capabilities to help you conduct analysis and generate interactive visualizations.
The application helps you simplify managing data and inspecting important data using graphs and pie charts, and the engine allows you to perform ETL operations after loading and data cleaning within the engine, with no limit on the amount of data that can be stored.
Domo has more than 450 connectors available, some of which are accessible by default and others after requesting a URL from the support team, Domo is very flexible and they allow you to easily load locally stored CSV files.
Google Charts
The best data visualization tool for creating simple line charts and complex hierarchical trees.
A powerful and free data visualization tool, Google Charts, is designed for creating interactive charts that clearly communicate data and highlights.
These charts can be embedded online and you can choose the most suitable chart from a rich interactive library and configure it to your liking.
Supports HTML5 and SVG output, Google Charts works in the browser without using additional plugins, pulls data from Google Spreadsheets and Google Fusion Tables, Salesforce and other SQL databases.
Visualize data with pictograms, pie charts, histograms, maps, scatterplots, column and bar charts, area charts, treemaps, timelines, gauges, and more.
FusionCharts
The best data visualization tool for building beautiful web and mobile dashboards.
FusionCharts is a JavaScript-based solution for creating web and mobile dashboards that can be integrated with popular JS frameworks such as React, jQuery, Ember and Angular, as well as server-side programming languages such as PHP, Java, Django and Ruby on Rails )integrated.
The tool offers 100+ interactive chart types and 2.000+ data-driven maps, including popular options like bar, column, line, area, and pie charts, or domain-specific charts like treemaps, Heatmaps, Gantt charts, Marimekko charts, gauges, spider charts, and waterfall charts.
In addition to that, FusionCharts also provides 2K+ zonal statistical maps covering countries and even cities, and the powerful engine supports millions of data points in the browser without any glitches.
Chart.Js
Simple and flexible data visualization software for including animated interactive graphics on your website.
Chart.js is a simple and flexible JavaScript charting library that provides a total of eight chart types and allows animation and interaction.
Using an HTML5 canvas for output, Chart.js efficiently renders charts in all modern browsers.
You can mix and match bar and line charts to provide clear visual distinctions between datasets, plotting complex sparse datasets on datetime, logarithmic, and fully custom scales.
Make anything with stunning out-of-the-box transitions for data changes.
six sense
Data visualization tools for simplifying complex data from multiple sources.
Sisense is one of the best data visualization tools that transforms data into actionable and applicable components or visualizations, it allows simplifying data analysis by unlocking data from the cloud and on-premises, and embedding analytics anywhere with customizable features .
Workday Adaptive planning
Data visualization tool with best-in-class planning, budgeting and forecasting.
Workday's adaptive planning data visualization tools are designed to advance business by making more profitable decisions, allowing planning, budgeting, and forecasting while evaluating multiple scenarios in large datasets.
Collaborate via web, mobile, or Excel and deliver stunning reports in minutes while quickly optimizing sales resources, improving rep performance, and increasing predictability.
Create dashboards that integrate actuals and plans, easily manage models and forecasts across integrated data sources, and always pull in real-time data.
Automatically integrate data from all sources and use flexible modeling that lets you build dynamically and resize as needed.
Grafana
Open source data visualization tool for integrating with all data sources and using the smoothest graphics.
In Grafana, information can be packaged and presented through various graph types, and if you want to make dynamic dashboards, there are not many visualization tools that can make the process easier than Grafana.
Grafana's open source data visualization software allows you to create dynamic dashboards and other visualizations.
Query, visualize, alert on, and understand metrics wherever they are stored, and deploy data source permissions, reports, and usage insights.
By braiding
The best data visualization software to motivate and engage your employees to perform better through dashboards.
By visualizing performance metrics openly and engagingly, Plecto helps keep team morale at high levels and motivate employees to continuously improve.
Plecto allows integration with an unlimited number of data sources, and it is even possible to import data from different sources and filter those data across sources.
Visualize the most important KPIs on real-time dashboards and engage your team with addictive gamification features, sales contests, leaderboards and instant notifications.
Whatagraph
The best data visualization tool for monitoring and comparing the performance of multiple campaigns.
Whatagraph app allows to transfer custom data from Google Sheets and API.
Commonly used by marketing professionals to visualize data and build custom cross-channel reports, Whatagraph is the best tool for performance monitoring and reporting.
Blend data from different sources and create cross-channel reports to compare the performance of the same campaign across channels.
Cluvius
Best-in-class data visualization software for running SQL queries.
Cluvio's ability to leverage SQL and R to analyze data and create engaging, interactive dashboards in minutes is better than any other tool on the market.
Transform raw data into a wealth of professional charts and graphs, and share dashboards with clients and colleagues without mandatory logins.
RAWGraphs
The best data visualization tool for simplifying complex data through compelling visual representations.
RAWGraphs will enable you to quickly generate beautiful data visualizations uploaded as XLSX or CSV files, as well as URL uploads and spreadsheet copies.
The software provides mapping and exporting visualizations as SVG or PNG images, which can be customized by entering additional parameters.
You can use Delimiter to separate values (CSV and TSV files), and copy-paste text from other applications (TextEdit, Excel) and CORS-enabled endpoints (API).
Data here is only processed by web browsers, and charts are provided in regular and non-conventional layouts.
Visually
Fast and affordable data visualization solutions for infographics and interactive websites.
Visual is a data visualization and infographics platform that helps you turn data into compelling stories, allowing you to turn numbers into image-based visualizations and streamline the product design process.
Looker
Data visualization tools for converting data into useful charts.
Looker will help develop and simplify accurate data models and visualize code in interactive diagrams.
Looker provides a dashboard through which you can drill down and analyze your data, with a choice of funnel, map, timeline, ring multiples, snake diagram, treemap, combo chart, or measure multiple visualizations.
Chartist.js
The best data visualization tool for small teams that need simple, responsive charts.
Chartist.js is an open-source charting JavaScript library with a flexible, lightweight interface for flexible integration.
Create responsive, scalable, and beautiful diagrams while leveraging simple manipulation, great flexibility, while using a clear separation of concerns (style with CSS and control with JS), SVG for illustration, and more.
Sigma.js
Single-purpose data visualization tool for creating network diagrams.
Sigma.js allows the creation of embeddable, interactive and responsive graphics, helping to customize plots and allowing publishing of the final results on any website.
To make operations on the web as smooth and fast as possible, Sigma.js provides features such as Canvas and WebGL renderers, as well as mouse and touch support.
Qlik
The best data visualization software to quickly build complex data models through its relational engine.
Qlik innovatively provides data visualization services to quickly acquire data from various sources, while automatically maintaining data associations and supporting multiple forms of data presentation.
Capture large volumes of data and quickly and automatically generate reports while extracting valuable insights from transparent reporting capabilities and identifying trends and information to help make best practice decisions.
Quickly understand information with powerful global search and selection through interactive dashboards.
Merge, load, visualize, and explore data, and activate Insight Advisor's help for chart creation, association suggestions, and data preparation.
Polymaps
Dedicated JavaScript library for mapping and complete data visualization.
Designed for mapping, Polymaps is a free and open-source JavaScript library for creating interactive dynamic maps, using CSS to design and SVG to display data in several types of visual presentation styles.
The map's visuals can be customized using the CSS mechanism, which can then be easily embedded into any website or application.
The software supports large-scale and rich data overlays on interactive maps and SVR-rendered vector files, as well as powerful graphics operations such as compositing, geometric transformations, and image manipulation.
Apply styles through CSS manipulation and take advantage of CSS3 animations and transitions.
The software provides a factory method for internally constructing the required objects, which results in shorter code and faster execution compared to traditional JS constructors.
Microsoft Power BI
The best data visualization tools for fostering a data-driven culture that empowers business intelligence for all.
Microsoft's Power BI is a data visualization and business intelligence tool that transforms data from a variety of sources into interactive, engaging, and story-telling dashboards and reports.
Power BI provides reliable connections to data sources on-premises and in the cloud, always ready to provide you with data exploration through natural language queries and real-time updates on dashboards.