Parts of a whole
Pie charts from a sentence, and an honest word about when not to use one
Name the parts and their values and the chart is drawn — as a pie or a donut, on your own colours, with the percentages written on it.
Straight answer first: there is no canvas here and nothing to drag. You describe the pie in a sentence, or bring a file you already have, and it is drawn for you — on your own brand. If you want to place every shape by hand, draw.io is free and better at that. If you have the numbers already, read on.
Your file is read once to draw the diagram and is never stored. Converting turns on anonymous usage analytics — we never send your file, its contents or your brand URL. What we measure
Paste any URL. We read its palette and type and redraw the diagram in them — about a second, no account.
Colour
Found on your site
Any colour
Found on your site
Any colour
Found on your site
Any colour
Found on your site
Any colour
Found on your site
Any colour
Found on your site
Any colour
Or set it yourself
Every choice here redraws the diagram. Nothing is saved.
Language
The layout mirrors and the Arabic type scale applies, free. Translating the labels needs an account on a paid plan.
Skin
Type
Motion
Line
Depth
A bar in relief still measures correctly — the top face sits on the bar's end. A pie does not: squashing the circle makes the near slices read larger than the far ones at the same share.
Show
Font
Your diagram
Selected shape
Icon
Fill
Border
Label
Pages in this file
Try it with this
Paste this into the description box above — it is the example that produces the worked pie in the gallery.
Share of the engine by area: layout 46, rendering 28, parsing 18, export 8.
A pie only works when the parts make a whole
That sounds obvious and it is the commonest way a pie chart lies. If your categories overlap — customers who use feature A and customers who use feature B, when some use both — the slices sum past 100% and the chart is simply wrong, however good it looks. We draw what you give us and say so in the ledger rather than silently rescaling, because rescaling is what makes a wrong chart look right. Above about six slices, a bar chart is easier to read: people compare lengths well and angles badly.
What comes out
Drawn by this pipeline, not picked to flatter it.
What you get out
SVG and PNG on any plan. PowerPoint with real editable shapes and live text — not a picture of a chart you cannot fix a typo in — plus our own .dgm format, which is plain text you can edit and re-import. Every conversion returns a ledger saying what changed, because you know your own diagram and would notice anyway.
Questions people actually ask
- Pie or donut?
- A donut when the total itself is worth reading — it goes in the middle. A pie when only the shares matter. Same data, and you can switch without redescribing it.
- Does it label the percentages?
- Yes, under each slice name. A pie without its numbers asks the reader to estimate an angle, which people are measurably bad at.
- What about tiny slices?
- They are drawn honestly, and the ledger says when one is under 2% and thinner than its own label. Grouping them as "other" is a decision about your data, so it is reported rather than made for you.
Other diagram types
flowchart maker histogram maker swimlane diagram process flow diagram venn diagram maker gantt chart maker org chart maker er diagram tool
All 53 types have a worked example in the gallery.