An area chart is a line graph with weight: the filled surface emphasizes volume, not just direction. Stack several series and you get one of the most informative charts in business: total growth and its composition in a single picture.
This area chart maker renders everything client-side with soft gradient fills and clean typography, then exports to PNG or SVG without an account or a watermark you can’t turn off.
How to make a area chart online
- Lay out your periods. Rows are your x-axis: years, quarters, months. Paste them from a spreadsheet together with one column per segment you want to track.
- Decide: stacked or overlapping. “Stacked” (on by default) piles segments so the top edge is your total. Toggle it off for translucent overlapping areas when you compare independent series.
- Style the surfaces. Pick a palette and canvas, keep smooth curves or switch to straight edges, and add a subtitle that names your units.
- Export. Download as PNG for documents and slides or SVG for design tools, or share the whole chart as a link.
When should you use an area chart?
Use a stacked area chart when the total matters and you want to show what it’s made of: revenue by product line, traffic by channel, energy by source. The outline tells the growth story; the bands tell the composition story.
A simple (unstacked) area chart is a line graph that wants presence: one or two series where the magnitude itself is the message, like cumulative users or cash balance.
Avoid stacking more than five or six segments: the middle bands become hard to read because they don’t share a baseline. And never stack percentages that don’t sum to a meaningful total.
Quick tips for a chart people trust
- Order stacked segments with the largest or most stable band at the bottom; it gives the chart a calm foundation.
- Area charts should start the y-axis at zero; the filled surface implies quantity from the baseline up.
- Prefer the stacked view for composition and the line graph for precise comparison; bands in the middle of a stack are hard to measure by eye.
- Use related colors (one palette family) for segments of one whole, rather than clashing hues.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the difference between an area chart and a line graph?
They share a skeleton, but the fill changes the message. A line graph emphasizes the trajectory of each series independently; an area chart emphasizes volume, and a stacked area chart adds the parts together so the top edge traces the total. If readers should compare exact values between series, lines are easier; if they should grasp scale and composition, areas win.
How do stacked area charts work here?
Each column of your table is a band. Values at each x-position are added bottom-to-top in column order, so the upper edge of the top band is the sum. Toggle “Stacked” off and each series is drawn from zero with translucent fill instead.
Can bands overlap without stacking?
Yes: turn “Stacked” off. Fills become translucent gradients so overlapping regions stay readable, which suits comparing two independent magnitudes like revenue vs costs.
Does the export keep the gradients?
Yes. Gradients, fonts and exact colors are embedded in both PNG and SVG exports. The SVG opens cleanly in Figma, Illustrator and Inkscape with editable vector shapes.