3 Treemap Makers, Compared Honestly

Forty product categories and a pie chart with forty slices, most of them slivers. Nobody can read it, and the three that matter are lost among thirty-seven that do not.

A treemap handles this by encoding size as rectangle area and packing everything into one filled space, so large categories dominate visually and small ones still exist without demanding a slice of the circle. It also nests — categories within categories — which a pie chart cannot do at all. The catch is labels: below a certain rectangle size, text stops fitting, and how a tool handles that determines whether the chart is readable.

How to judge a treemap maker

Does it support hierarchy? A flat treemap is a fancy bar chart. Nesting is what the format is actually for.

What happens to small labels? Truncation, omission, or overflow. Overflow is the worst and the most common.

What can you export? PNG covers slides. SVG matters for print or anything that will be scaled.

Where is the data processed? Revenue by category is usually not something to upload casually.

The comparison

Facts checked August 2026; tools change. Table covers only the 3 alternatives — our tool gets its own section below.

5of10 Treemap Maker

The one that takes hierarchy seriously. It explicitly supports nested data through an “Add Root Category” structure, so you can build genuine parent-child levels rather than a flat list of rectangles — which is the reason to choose a treemap over a bar chart in the first place.

Export covers both PNG and SVG, and all chart creation happens client-side in your browser with data never leaving your device. Free, no signup. Styling options are fewer than the alternatives, so if the chart needs to match a brand palette exactly you will be doing that elsewhere.

ScatterPlotMaker

The most balanced. Each tile represents a category with size reflecting its value, and you get control over title and subtitle, tile colour, border radius, background and text colour, chart height, plus animation and tooltip toggles and data label visibility. Export covers PNG, JPEG and SVG, with SVG recommended for web and print since it scales without quality loss.

All processing happens in the browser with nothing sent to servers, which it notes makes it safe for confidential business data — a fair point for a chart of revenue by segment. No account needed. Its model is category-and-value rather than deep nesting.

RauGen Treemap Maker

The most opinionated on appearance. Alongside title, labels and values, it offers font size, border width, background, font and border colours, five colour theme presets — Default, Pastel, Dark, Earth, Ocean — and a choice of aspect ratios including 1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and 3:2 or custom.

Aspect ratio control is more useful than it sounds for treemaps specifically, because the packing algorithm produces different rectangle shapes depending on the canvas, and a 16:9 treemap for a slide is genuinely different from a square one. Export is PNG only, so print work needs another tool. Free, no signup.

Treemap Maker

Ours turns labelled values into a treemap with area encoding size, grouping, colour by category, and labels that stay readable at small sizes. That last point is the design decision worth naming — every treemap eventually contains rectangles too small for their label, and the difference between a tool that truncates sensibly and one that overflows text across neighbouring tiles is the difference between a usable chart and a mess.

What it does not do: export SVG, or offer aspect ratio presets and colour themes. For a print figure, ScatterPlotMaker or 5of10 give you vector output and we do not. Treemapping has several packing algorithms behind it, and the squarified approach most tools use is why rectangles come out closer to square than to slivers.

Which one to pick

• Genuine nested hierarchy — 5of10.
• A vector file for print — ScatterPlotMaker or 5of10.
• Matching a slide’s aspect ratio and palette — RauGen.
• Many categories where labels must stay readable — the tool below.

How to do it with Treemap Maker

1. Open the Treemap Maker and paste your labels and values.
2. Group related categories rather than showing forty flat rectangles.
3. Use colour for category, not for size — area already encodes size, and doubling up wastes the channel.
4. Check the smallest tiles. If their labels are unreadable, group them into an “Other” category rather than shrinking the text.

The walkthrough is in how to show share of total with a treemap. Other data tools are in the tools directory.

You might also need

If the underlying figures need computing first, the CSV Computed Column tool adds the totals a treemap needs.

For a sequence of changes rather than a share of total, the Waterfall Chart Maker is the right chart type.

Frequently asked questions

When should I use a treemap instead of a pie chart?

When you have more than about six categories, when the categories nest, or when small values still need to be visible. Pie charts break down quickly past a handful of slices; treemaps stay legible with dozens.

Why are some of my labels missing?

Because the rectangle is too small to hold the text. The honest fixes are grouping small categories into “Other”, or accepting that the smallest tiles are read from a tooltip rather than a label — shrinking the font until everything fits makes the whole chart unreadable.

Can a treemap show negative values?

No. Area cannot be negative, so treemaps only work for values that are all positive. For data with gains and losses, a waterfall chart is the right format.

Final thought

Group the long tail before you chart it. A treemap with an “Other” rectangle and eight readable categories communicates more than one with forty tiles, thirty of which are too small to label.

Try the free Treemap Maker