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Stacked Bar Chart Maker

Show a total and its parts in one bar. Upload your spreadsheet, choose the categories to stack, and publish an interactive stacked bar chart you can embed anywhere — free.

Create a Stacked Bar Chart — freeSee the gallery

What is a Stacked Bar Chart?

A stacked bar chart is a bar chart in which each bar is divided into segments, so the bar's full length is the total and each segment is one part of it. It answers two questions with one shape: how big is each category overall, and what is it made of. The trade-off is fixed and worth knowing up front — only the bottom segment sits on a common baseline, so that series is easy to compare across bars and every series above it is not.

When to use a Stacked Bar Chart

  • The total matters as much as the breakdown

    Revenue by region split by product, headcount by department split by seniority. If your reader needs both numbers, stacking gives them both without a second chart.

  • You have a small number of segments

    Two to five segments per bar stay readable. Beyond that the middle bands get thin, the colours get hard to tell apart, and the chart stops being useful.

  • You want to show composition changing across categories

    Stacked bars across time periods or countries make it easy to see when one segment starts taking over — provided that segment is at the bottom of the stack.

  • You are comparing shares, not amounts

    A 100% stacked variant normalises every bar to the same length so only the proportions differ. Use it when the totals are irrelevant or distractingly different in size.

When not to use a Stacked Bar Chart

  • Your reader needs to compare the middle segments precisely

    Segments that do not touch a shared baseline cannot be compared accurately by eye. If a middle series is the point of the chart, use grouped bars or a small multiple of separate charts instead.

  • You have many segments per bar

    Eight or ten stacked categories become a stripe of indistinguishable colours. Group the long tail into an explicit "Other" band, or switch to a treemap.

  • The parts do not sum to a meaningful total

    Stacking implies the segments add up to something real. Averages, rates and percentages of different denominators do not, and stacking them produces a number that means nothing.

  • You are showing one category's parts only

    For a single total split into parts, a donut chart or a simple bar breakdown is easier to read than one lone stacked column.

How to make a Stacked Bar Chart

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

01

Start from the stacked bar template

Open the PlotSet stacked bar chart template. Sample data comes bound so you can see the expected spreadsheet layout before uploading your own.

02

Shape your data as one row per category

Put the thing being compared in the first column — region, month, country — and one column per segment. Each numeric column becomes one band in every bar.

03

Upload or connect your source

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

04

Order the stack deliberately

Put the series your reader most needs to compare at the bottom, on the shared baseline. Then order the remaining bands consistently across every bar so the eye can track them.

05

Publish, embed or export

Publish for a live interactive embed with hover tooltips, or export a PNG, SVG or PDF for a report or deck.

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

Open the template

The parts of a Stacked Bar Chart

Category axis
The axis carrying what you are comparing — one bar per region, month or product.
Value axis
The numeric scale the bar lengths are measured against. It must start at zero: bar length is the encoding, and a truncated axis makes the lengths lie.
Segment (band)
One part of the total inside a bar. Its length is that part's value; its colour identifies the series across every bar.
Stack order
The vertical sequence of segments. The bottom band is the only one on a shared baseline, which makes stack order a real analytical decision, not a styling one.
Legend
The colour-to-series key. With few segments, labelling the bands directly beats a separate legend because it removes the back-and-forth lookup.
Total label
An optional value at the end of each bar. Worth adding when the total is part of the story, since reading a stacked total off an axis is imprecise.

Common Stacked Bar Chart mistakes

Stacking too many series

Past about five bands the chart becomes a colour gradient. Roll the small categories into a labelled "Other" segment and keep the ones your reader can name.

Changing the stack order between bars

If segments appear in a different order from bar to bar, cross-bar comparison becomes impossible. Fix the order once and keep it.

Cutting the value axis

Bars encode value as length from zero. Starting the axis anywhere else breaks that encoding and overstates every difference on the chart.

Using a stacked chart when you meant grouped

If the question is "which segment is biggest in each category?" rather than "what does each total consist of?", grouped bars on a shared baseline answer it far more accurately.

Stacked Bar Chart: common questions

Showing a total and its composition at the same time. Each bar's length is the total for that category, and the coloured segments inside it show which parts make up that total.

Make your Stacked Bar Chart now

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

Create a Stacked Bar Chart — freeAll chart types