Top 9 Data Visualization Tools for 2020

You can find the original version of this post on the Visual Blog's Visual Learning Center. 

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In business settings, data visualization tools can help visualize all the data generated by business processes, and create dashboards to keep track of pretty much everything.

Data visualization tools are also perfect for creating graphics with data about specific events, projects, analyses and information.

Data visualization tools come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve put together this list to help you choose the best one for your needs.

What is a Data Visualization Tool?

Before we get started with our list, let’s find out what a data visualization tool is in the first place.

In a few words, it’s a software that takes data from a specific source and turns it into visual charts, graphs, tables, dashboards and the like.

Data visualization tools can create anything from simple pie graphs to complicated interactive choropleths. The trick is choosing one with all the right features.

Thankfully, some tools are more versatile than others. Some data visualization tools are easy to use, while others have a high learning curve.

In this article, we’ve included 9 data visualization tools for different styles and purposes.

1. Visme

Visme is a data visualization tool that goes above and beyond data.

Using a full set of tools, including a graph maker, chart templates and a data widget library, you can easily create data visualizations of different types.

The best part is you can add these visualizations to any project you’re working on in Visme, such as a proposal, presentation, report or an infographic.

Customize chart templates in Visme. Browse and edit now.

Visme integrates business intelligence with interactive design to help you create data visualizations that are not only easy to read and understand, but also look stunning.

What can you do with Visme?

Visme’s graph maker has the power to easily create line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, scatter plots, histograms and many more chart styles. The data widgets in Visme are perfect for visualizing map data, arrays, tables, percentages, gauges and more.

Import live data from Google Sheets and create custom dashboards to track business insights. You can also create social media reports, sales reports and goal projections easily using a wide range of ready-to-go templates.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Here’s a video that shows you how Visme helps you create data visualizations.

Who is it for?

Technically, Visme is for anyone who needs to create data visualizations and visual graphics for a variety of purposes.

For example, you can create charts for blogs, reports, proposals, social media, school reports, presentations, print collateral and more. But most of all, Visme is for people who need to create beautiful visuals without needing to learn about design.

Nevertheless, Visme offers lots of resources to improve your designer’s eye and make the most out of the tools provided in the editor.

If you need a great-looking data visualization on its own, as part of a dashboard, or inside a report or proposal — Visme is the right data visualization tool for you.

How much does it cost?

Visme has a free plan with plenty of options to help you get to know the platform.

If you want to access our premium features, the Standard Plan is $15/month and the Complete Plan is $29/month. For enterprise solutions, contact us for a custom quote.

Special pricing

A Student account costs $30/semester and an Educator account costs $60/semester. There is also a 25% discount for nonprofit organizations.

Learn more about Visme pricing here.

2. Tableau

Tableau is one of the most recognized business information data visualization tools. What’s most notable about Tableau is that visualization is at the core of everything.

The data visualization and data analytics tools inside Tableau have revolutionized the way businesses manage their data.

A great thing about Tableau is that even though they offer private data analytics and visualizations for big data, corporations and businesses, they also have Tableau Public.

Tableau Public is a free platform where anyone can create a data visualization. Data can be imported from a spreadsheet or entered manually.

The main differences between Tableau Desktop (TD) and Tableau Public (TP) are as follows.

• Privacy: All visualizations created with TP are available to see for anyone in the Tableau Community and beyond. TD has privacy parameters to create projects with password protection or completely private.
• Visualization Tools: TD has more tools and capabilities than TP. But TP is still quite powerful in itself.
• Data Sources: When using TD, you have numerous data sources that can be integrated with the tool. In TP, you can only import Excel sheets and text files.

What can you do with Tableau?

According to Tableau, you can create nearly any type of visualization with their platform. From a simple chart to creative and interactive visualizations like the one below about The Beatles.

Some say that the possibilities with Tableau are pretty much endless. What we love the most about Tableau is that you can embed a visualization created with the tool into your Visme project, proposal or report. That way, you get the best of both worlds (or tools!)

Who is it for?

Tableau is technically for anyone interested in using data as a driving force in business, community, the environment and the world itself.

For example, Tableau can help:

• Large corporations analyze big data
• Journalists visualize world events
• Students create data analyses

How much does it cost?

Tableau Public is completely free.

Tableau Desktop starts at $70 per user per month. Tableau can be used as Tableau Online with a Tableau Server, but can also be self-hosted on a private server.

3. Infogram

Infogram, now part of Prezi, is a versatile online data visualization creator. The tool offers varied and extensive options, and you don’t need to have a Prezi account to use it.

Infogram’s data visualization tool has been one of the favorites for a while because of it’s easy-to-use interface. The data visualizations you can create on Infogram are straightforward and the learning curve is quite low.

What can you do with Infogram?

Infogram has over 30 types of charts and single maps to customize as you like. They’ve recently added social media graphics and other visuals to use with your visualizations.

A notable feature of the tool is the dashboard template library. These are projects with many visualizations in one place, perfect for tracking company data and finding trends.

Create stunning charts and graphs. Sign up for free here.

Who is it for?

Infogram is great for business owners who want to analyze their data, and big companies that need to showcase data in projects, dashboards and reports.

This tool is also good for content creators, students and journalists looking to visualize a piece of information.

It’s also the perfect tool for anyone who needs a word cloud created with real data.

How much does it cost?

There is a free version of Infogram with limited capabilities, which is great for trying out the tool. Paid plans start at $19 for Personal plans and go as high as $149 for Enterprise plans. 

4. Whatagraph

Whatagraph is a data visualization tool that offers visual data analytics for social media, PPC, SEO and email campaigns.

The visual analytics are created from a number of different integrations, spanning from Twitter to Google Analytics. The Whatagraph data visualizations can also be customized to match your brand with white label templates.

What can you do with Whatagraph?

The main data visualization feature of Whatagraph is to show and analyze social media and email marketing campaigns.

You can integrate the tool with many different services and create branded analytics dashboards that look amazing.

Who is it for?

Whatagraph is perfect for digital marketers who need to create visual dashboards for clients. By using the integrations with different marketing channels, users are able to easily put together reports and dashboards.

This tool is also useful for social media managers who want to keep track of all the social platforms they’re using for campaigns. The reports are customizable according to each user’s needs.

How much does it cost?

The smallest plans with 1 user and 15 data sources starts at $119/month. The full-featured plan goes up to $699/month with unlimited users and customizable data sources. 

5. Sisense

Sisense is a business intelligence tool for creating data visualizations that help gain business insights.

Technically, Sisense is for creating dashboards. But the tool’s capabilities go beyond that. This data visualization tool is specially created to visualize large amounts of data.

Developers can create analytics apps using the Sisense API with any sort of data set. This is great for larger corporations in industries like health and manufacturing.

Likewise, the platform also helps business owners create their own dashboards according to their needs.

What can you do with Sisense?

With Sisense, you can create dashboards for tracking any type of data. From social media marketing to health, manufacturing and more.

The dashboards can be created in any way the user wants according to the data they need to analyze.

The dashboard tool is intuitive and also offers interactive data visualization widgets like Sankey diagrams, scatter plots and much more.

Who is it for?

Sisens is for anyone who needs to visualize and analyze large data sets. There is no industry that Sisense won’t work with.

The versatility of developers being able to create analytic apps as well as non-dev people being able to create dashboards is quite impressive.

How much does it cost?

Prices are not displayed on the website. Users have to ask for a custom quote according to their needs. Simply fill out a form and the Sisense team will call you. 

6. DataBox

DataBox is another data dashboard tool that’s less robust than Sisense.

This data visualization tool has a DIY dashboard creator with integrations for many data sources. Plus, it offers plenty of templates to choose from.

The style of DataBox’s dashboards is a bit different from others in the same niche. The colors are richer and deeper, which is perfect for people who like dark mode on their laptops.

What can you do with DataBox?

DataBox is exclusively for creating dashboards and analytics apps for mobile and desktop.

The main messaging on the DataBox website is how their tool helps data analysts predict performance. They also offer training in Predictable Performance for business analysts.

Who is it for?

The templates in DataBox seem to be geared mostly towards marketers, such as HubSpot, Google Analytics and email templates. This is a great tool for business data analysts who want to track their team’s efforts.

How much does it cost?

DataBox offers a robust free plan to get you started. The rest of their business plans go up to $248/month. Agency pricing is upon request.

7. ChartBlocks

ChartBocks is an easy-to-use data visualization tool for creating charts and graphs. Recently, it was integrated with Ceros, an interactive content creation tool.

Users can access the charts from ChartBlocks from inside their Ceros dashboard or directly from the ChartBlocks site.

Charts with ChartBlocks are hosted with D3.js, and are fully responsive to share on any platform and to view on any device. Users can easily insert a chart into their Ceros projects.

What can you do with ChartBlocks?

With ChartBlocks, you can create any type of chart or graph. Their chart maker is fully customizable, and can be adjusted to fit brand guidelines or a project’s color palette.

The data for the charts can be imported from spreadsheets or SQL, or entered manually.

Who is it for?

ChartBlocks is for anyone who needs to create a chart for a proposal, report or project. This data visualization tool is relatively easy to use and the learning curve isn’t steep.

Depending on the pricing plan, users have more or less capabilities for creating engaging charts.

How much does it cost?

There is a free plan that allows up to 50 active charts, which is perfect for beginners. The plans go up to $65/month with additional features like an API integration and live data polling. 

8. DataWrapper

DataWrapper is a data visualization tool for creating charts, maps and tables.

All charts created with DataWrapper are mobile responsive — the visualizations adjust to different screen sizes by minimizing lines and shrinking empty spaces.

What can you do with DataWrapper?

With DataWrapper, you can create almost any type of chart, customizable maps and responsive tables. It’s simple to customize your visualizations with the integrated design tools. The charts can also be shared or printed easily.

Since DataWrapper visualizations can be exported as responsive code, any charts and graphs made with the tool can be added to your Visme projects.

Create interactive maps to visualized geographic data. Sign up for free here.

Who is it for?

This data visualization tool is for anyone who needs to create a chart, graph, table or map. From students to journalists and marketers in between, there’s really no limit to who can use DataWrapper.

The purpose of their tool is to help users make charts and graphs that look great even without coding or any design skills.

How much does it cost?

DataWrapper has a free plan with many features. For more professional capabilities, there’s a $599/month plan. Enterprise pricing is upon request.

9. Google Charts

The last data visualization tool on our list is Google Charts.

This is the only tool in the list that needs coding knowledge to build data visualizations. If you don’t know how to code, figuring out how to use Google Charts may have a high learning curve.

It’s easy to embed any Google Chart into a website or online platform. The data can be static or dynamic according to the source.

The best part about Google Charts is that it’s completely free, and available to use for both personal and commercial projects.

Create amazing charts and graphs. Sign up for free here.

What can you do with Google Charts?

With Google Charts, you can create many types of custom charts and graphs, even animated ones. Everything in Google Charts is built with code, but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier.

Who is it for?

This is the perfect data visualization tool for those of you who want complete control. That said, you need to know HTML and JavaScript to really get the full gamut of options.

In terms of who the charts in Google Charts are for, they are for anyone who needs to visualize data in a simple and easy-to-read way.

How much does it cost?

Google Charts is completely free. 

Learn How to Visualize Data With the Visme Blog

At Visme, we are big fans of data visualization. That’s why our blog is full of useful articles to help you create great-looking and effective data visualizations of your own.

Check out articles about creating histograms and scatter plots, how to create interactive maps and even about turning dry data into visual stories.

Visit the Visme Visual Learning Center to find out more.

Create Your Own Data Visualizations With Visme

Creating your own data visualizations is easy with Visme. There are hundreds of templates to choose from, spanning from charts and graphs on their own to multi-page presentations, reports and proposals.

The graph maker lets you create 20+ different types of charts and graphs, all of which can be fully customized and animated according to your needs.

Our data widgets, maps, flowcharts and tables complete the suite of data visualization tools available inside the Visme editor. All your data visualizations made with Visme can then be added to any project in just a couple of clicks.

Get started with a free Visme account and take it for a test drive.

Did you find this helpful? You can find the original version of this post here. For more engaging and helpful content, visit Visme’s Visual Learning Center.