Pie chart vs donut chart
A donut is a pie with the middle removed. That hole is the entire difference, and it decides which one you want: it costs you a little of the area readers use to compare slices, and it buys you a place to put the total.
Both charts below are the same data — Market share — so the difference you see is the chart type, not the numbers.
Pie chart
Use it when
- The slices are the story and the total is obvious or irrelevant.
- One slice dominates and you want that to be unmissable.
- The chart stands alone rather than sitting on a dashboard.
- You have four or fewer categories.
Donut chart
Use it when
- The total matters as much as the split, and belongs in the middle.
- The chart is a dashboard tile that needs a headline number.
- The slices are similar in size, so the ring reads as a proportion bar.
- You want it to sit next to other tiles without shouting.
Which one
Default to the donut on a dashboard, because the hole earns its keep by holding the total. Default to the pie when the chart stands alone and one slice is meant to dominate. If you have more than five or six categories, neither is right — use a bar chart.
Questions people ask
- Are pie charts bad?
- They are bad at what people often use them for: comparing similar values, or showing more than a handful of categories. They are good at one thing, which is showing that something is roughly a half, a third or a quarter of a whole. Used for that, a pie is the fastest chart there is.
- How many slices is too many?
- Past five or six, slices become too thin to label and too similar to compare. Group the tail into an 'Other' slice, or switch to a ranked bar chart.