Overview
Flourish is a no-code visualization platform that specializes in animated, interactive visualizations and data stories. Acquired by Canva in 2022, Flourish has become the go-to tool for creating the kind of engaging, shareable visualizations that perform well on social media and in presentations. Its signature feature is the “Story” mode, which chains multiple visualization states into a scrollable or clickable narrative.
Unlike tools that focus on static chart quality, Flourish emphasizes motion and interactivity. Its bar chart race template alone has generated billions of views across YouTube and social media. But beyond viral templates, Flourish offers a serious visualization toolkit with support for advanced chart types like Sankey diagrams, network graphs, and 3D globe maps that would require significant coding effort in other tools.
Flourish provides a generous free tier (with Flourish branding on public projects) and paid plans for private projects, custom branding, and team collaboration. Its template-based approach means you can create sophisticated visualizations in minutes by simply replacing the sample data with your own.
Strengths
- Smooth, beautiful animations and transitions between data states
- Story mode enables scrollytelling narratives without any code
- Extensive template library covering exotic chart types (Sankey, chord, network, globe)
- Bar chart race and other animated templates produce highly shareable content
- Embeds are responsive and work well on mobile devices
- Direct Google Sheets integration for live-updating visualizations
- Custom template SDK allows developers to create new Flourish templates
- Canva integration brings Flourish charts directly into Canva designs
- Free tier allows unlimited public visualizations
Limitations
- Template-driven approach limits customization outside of template parameters
- Cannot combine multiple chart types into a single unified dashboard
- Data processing must happen before import; no built-in transformation tools
- Some advanced templates (3D globe, AR) can be slow on older devices
- Free tier requires all projects to be public
- API access is limited compared to tools like Datawrapper
- Print/static export quality is secondary to the interactive experience
- Custom templates require JavaScript development knowledge
Best For
Flourish is the ideal tool when your visualization needs to tell a story, animate over time, or capture attention on social media. It excels at creating bar chart races, animated scatter plots, election result maps, and scrollytelling narratives. If you are a journalist, marketer, or educator who needs to turn data into an engaging narrative experience without writing code, Flourish delivers results that would take days to code from scratch.
Getting Started
- Go to flourish.studio and sign up for a free account
- Click New Visualization and browse the template gallery
- Select a template (e.g., “Bar chart race”, “Line chart”, “Projection map”)
- In the Data tab, replace the sample data by pasting your own or linking a Google Sheet
- In the Preview tab, watch your visualization come to life
- Customize colors, labels, and animation settings in the settings panel
- For data stories, click Create a Story, add multiple slides, and configure transitions
- Click Export & Publish to get an embed code or direct link
To create a Flourish Story (scrollytelling):
- Create individual visualizations first
- Click New Story
- Add visualizations as slides
- For each slide, choose a transition (e.g., slide, fade, zoom)
- Add text annotations for narrative context
- Publish and embed — the story responds to scroll events automatically
Supported Chart Types
Flourish offers an unusually broad template library: bar charts, stacked bar charts, line graphs, area graphs, pie charts, donut charts, scatterplots, bubble charts, treemaps, choropleth maps, Sankey diagrams, chord diagrams, network diagrams, radar charts, word clouds, hierarchy/sunburst charts, 3D globe maps, arc maps, survey/Likert charts, slope charts, parliament charts, pictogram charts, and sports brackets. Its bar chart race and scatter plot animation templates are particularly notable. The template SDK also allows the community to create and share new visualization types.