Chart maker

Horizontal Bar Chart Maker

Rank categories with long labels as sideways bars

A horizontal bar chart draws each category as a bar that extends from left to right, which gives long category names room to stay on one line. InstaCharts turns any spreadsheet into a horizontal bar chart with a single toggle, and the same option works for grouped and stacked bar charts.

Make a Horizontal Bar Chart Free

Open the Demo

A live horizontal bar chart example

An interactive horizontal bar chart built and embedded with InstaCharts.

Templates

Horizontal Bar Chart templates

Choose the Templates tab when you create a new sheet in InstaCharts. Each template loads a sample dataset with a finished chart, so you can replace the sample rows with your own numbers.

Top Reasons Customers Churn

Horizontal bar chart

Exit survey answers from customers who cancelled, counted by the reason they gave and ranked as horizontal bars.

Reason	Customers
Too expensive	184
Missing features they needed	152
Switched to a competitor	131
Hard to use	97
Slow customer support	76

Won and Lost Deals by Industry

Grouped horizontal bar chart

Deals won and deals lost in each industry segment, drawn as horizontal bars so the industry names stay readable.

Industry	Outcome	Deals
Healthcare and Life Sciences	Won	48
Healthcare and Life Sciences	Lost	31
Financial Services	Won	42
Financial Services	Lost	27
Manufacturing	Won	35

Department Budget by Expense Type

Stacked horizontal bar chart

How each department's annual budget splits across salaries, software, travel and equipment, stacked into horizontal bars.

Department	Expense Type	Amount
Engineering	Salaries	2450000
Engineering	Software	420000
Engineering	Travel	85000
Engineering	Equipment	190000
Sales and Marketing	Salaries	1780000

Your data

What data you need for a horizontal bar chart

Paste your spreadsheet, upload a CSV or Excel file, or connect a Google Sheet, and InstaCharts detects your column types and builds the horizontal bar chart automatically.

X-Axis

Categorical data, the names of the items you are ranking. The Horizontal Bars toggle turns the categories into rows

Y-Axis

Numerical values, shown as the length of each bar starting at zero

Use cases

When to use a horizontal bar chart

Best uses

Rank items with long names, such as survey answers, product names, or job titles
Show top and bottom performers in a sorted list that reads from top to bottom
Compare categories on a phone screen or a narrow web page where vertical bars would crowd the labels
Present many categories at once, since each extra bar adds height instead of width

When another chart fits better

Continuous time trends are clearer as a line graph
Part-to-whole splits suit a pie chart or a 100% stacked bar chart
Ordered time periods usually read best as vertical bars in a standard bar chart

How it works

How to make a horizontal bar chart

Step 1
Add your data
Paste a spreadsheet, or upload a CSV, Excel, TSV, or JSON file with one column of categories and one column of numbers.
Step 2
Pick a bar chart
Choose the bar chart type, or a grouped or stacked bar chart when your data has a breakdown column.
Step 3
Turn on Horizontal Bars
Open Options for Specific Chart Types and switch on the Horizontal Bars toggle to rotate the bars.
Step 4
Sort and label the bars
Sort the bars by value and add data labels so every category name and number is easy to read.
Step 5
Export or embed
Download as PNG or SVG, share a link, or embed a live chart that can update from a connected Google Sheet.

FAQ

Horizontal Bar Chart maker FAQ

Answers to common questions about making a horizontal bar chart with InstaCharts.

What is a horizontal bar chart?

A horizontal bar chart shows each category as a bar that extends from the left, and the length of the bar encodes the value. It is a bar chart rotated a quarter turn, which gives long category names plenty of room.

When should I use a horizontal bar chart instead of a vertical one?

Choose horizontal bars when category names are long, when there are many categories, or when the chart will appear on a narrow screen. Vertical bars suit a small number of short labels and ordered time periods.

How do I make a horizontal bar chart in InstaCharts?

Upload your data, choose the bar chart type, and switch on the Horizontal Bars toggle in the options for specific chart types. The toggle is available for bar, grouped bar, and stacked bar charts.

Can I make a grouped or stacked horizontal bar chart?

Yes. Horizontal Bars works with grouped bar charts, which place bars side by side, and with stacked bar charts, which split each bar into segments. The Won and Lost Deals by Industry and Department Budget by Expense Type templates show both.

How do I sort the bars from largest to smallest?

Sort the chart by value to rank the categories from largest to smallest. You can also limit the chart to the top N categories to keep a long list readable.

Is the horizontal bar chart maker free?

Yes. The free plan lets you create and export horizontal bar charts with up to 500 rows per sheet, and charts include a small watermark. Paid plans starting at $10 per user per month remove the watermark.

Want the full reference?

Read the horizontal bar chart documentation.

Related guides

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Bar Chart Maker

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Grouped Bar Chart Maker

Compare several series side by side

Stacked Bar Chart Maker

Show totals and composition in one chart

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