Free Data Visualization Tools: Pricing, Reviews and Real Limits
Nine tools with a genuine free tier, checked against their own pricing pages and hundreds of G2, Capterra and TrustRadius reviews.
Free data visualization tools split into two groups that get marketed the same way but behave nothing alike: genuinely free forever tools with a real limit (public charts, capped rows, no private sharing), and free trials of paid software that stop working once the trial clock runs out. This guide covers the first group only, tools where the free tier is a real, permanent product for building data visualization.
Every tool below gets the same treatment: what the free tier caps, what the paid tiers cost in real dollars, what a sample of real G2 and Capterra reviewers said they liked and didn't, and who each tool fits and who it doesn't. Every number and quote traces back to a dated source; where a fact couldn't be verified, it's left out entirely.
Free Data Visualization Tools at a Glance
This is a comparison grouped by what each free tier unlocks and what the paid step-up costs. It isn't a ranking.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid tier starts at | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Looker Studio | Free with a Google account | $9/user/project/mo (Pro) | 4.4/5, G2 |
| Tableau Public | Free, unlimited, public-only | $75/user/mo (Cloud Creator) | 9.9/10, TrustRadius |
| Power BI Desktop | Free desktop app | $14/user/mo (Pro) | 4.5/5, G2 |
| Datawrapper | Free, PNG export only | $21/user/mo (Pro) | 4.3/5, G2 |
| Flourish | Free, public projects only | Custom quote | 4.9/5, G2 (4 reviews) |
| RAWGraphs | Free and open source | No paid tier exists | 4.4/5, G2 |
| Metabase | Free, self-hosted, unlimited | $100/mo (Cloud Starter, 5 users) | 4.4/5, G2 |
| Gigasheet | Free, capped editing | $75/user/mo (Premium, annual) | 4.9/5, G2 |
| Python (matplotlib, seaborn, Plotly) | Free, open source libraries | $29/seat/mo (Plotly Cloud, optional) | Not applicable |
Pricing and ratings pulled directly from each vendor's own pricing page and public G2/Capterra/TrustRadius listings, July 2026. Full source list in the profiles below.
What "Free" Means Here
A free data visualization tool falls into one of three models: a hosted app with a permanent free tier gated by feature (Looker Studio, Datawrapper, Metabase Cloud), a public-only free tier where the trade for zero cost is that nothing stays private (Tableau Public, Flourish), or free and open source software you run yourself with no vendor gate at all (RAWGraphs, Metabase self-hosted, Python).
Each model trades something different for the free price, and none of them requires a paid plan just to start.
Data visualization tools often require the source data to already be in a clean, tabular format before any chart renders correctly. When a free tool looks broken, messy source data is the most common cause; the software usually works as intended. Gigasheet's own support documentation caps its native charts at the first 1,000 plotted values, a concrete example of a free tier's limit showing up somewhere a marketing page wouldn't mention.
The Nine Tools, In Depth
Each profile below covers exact pricing from the vendor's own page, an aggregate rating from an independent review platform, sourced strengths and weaknesses pulled from real reviews, independent of marketing copy, who the tool fits, and two verbatim excerpts from named or role-identified reviewers, each linked back to where it was published.
Looker Studio
Free forever for one person's reports. $9 a month per project once a team needs to own the workspace.
Google reversed the "Looker Studio" name back to "Data Studio" on April 11, 2026, though the free product itself didn't change: sign in with a Google account and build reports connected to 1,400 native data sources plus another 1,300 community connectors, at no cost.
Looker Studio Pro sits on top of that at $9 per user per project per month, billed against a Google Cloud project, unlike a flat per-seat rate, and it doesn't add new chart types. It adds team-owned workspaces, project-level permissions, audit logging, and CMEK encryption, the governance layer a solo user never needs.
The free tier's real ceiling is data blending: Looker Studio caps a blend at five sources and one join type, an outer left join, which is why reviewers who need real joins across systems describe the blending feature as error-prone but rarely fully broken.
Strengths
- Native BigQuery connection with optional BI Engine acceleration for large tables.
- Free connectors for the entire Google Marketing Platform: Ads, GA4, Search Console, Display & Video 360.
- Report embedding directly into a web page or intranet, plus scheduled email and Slack delivery.
- ISO 27001 certified and FedRAMP authorized, unusual for a tool with no paid floor.
Weaknesses
- Data blending caps at five sources and one join type, and breaks in ways reviewers call error-prone.
- Performance slows with large datasets or many charts on one report, the single most repeated G2 complaint.
- Weak connector coverage for non-Google sources like Bing or Yandex.
- Customization sits behind Tableau and Power BI once a report gets complex.
Good fit
Small and mid-size marketing, SEO, and PPC teams already living in Google Ads, GA4, and Sheets, plus nonprofits choosing it specifically because it needs no training budget.
Bad fit
Teams needing real joins across more than five sources, or anyone whose data lives mostly outside the Google ecosystem.
"Looker Studio can feel limited when it comes to more advanced data modelling and complex calculations. Performance may slow down with larger datasets, and some connectors can be unreliable... Customisation beyond the basic visualisations also feels somewhat restrictive."
Candy N. Global Digital Marketing Expert, small business G2 review, Jan 2026"Power BI doesn't have a connector for Google sheets... third party data integration options to pull from Google sheets into PowerBI/MS OneDrive added complications and reduced reliability."
Virgil H. Research and Evaluation Manager, non-profit Capterra review, on switching from Power BITableau Public
Every workbook is public, permanently, with no way to pay your way to privacy on this product.
Tableau Public is free with no time limit and no row cap that matters for most users, 15 million rows per workbook and 10 GB of storage, but the name is the whole deal: "workbooks and data published to your Tableau Public profile are not private and are freely accessible to anyone," per Tableau's own FAQ.
There's no live database connection either, only extracted data from files, Excel, or a Google Sheet refreshed every 24 hours. Wanting a private version of the same chart means stepping up to Tableau Cloud, $75 a user a month for a Creator seat on the Standard plan, billed annually, with no monthly option.
What the free tier does get right is variety: the same chart-type library as paid Tableau, plus a public gallery Tableau itself measured at over seven million published visualizations as of a 2023 snapshot. Several reviewers describe it as a genuine hiring and portfolio asset as much as a chart tool.
Strengths
- The widest chart-type library of any tool on this page, unchanged from the paid product.
- A public gallery Tableau measured at over 7 million vizzes as of 2023, useful for research and inspiration.
- Genuine portfolio value: multiple named community members credit it directly with landing a job.
Weaknesses
- No private option exists on this product at any price; that requires switching to Tableau Cloud entirely.
- No SQL database connections on the free tier, only files, Excel, and Google Sheets.
- Rendering slows noticeably once the data volume gets large, per repeated reviews.
- The learning curve carries straight into the paid tiers, so free time spent learning isn't wasted, but isn't short either.
Good fit
Journalists, students, nonprofits, and government agencies publishing intentionally public data, plus anyone building a public portfolio to show employers.
Bad fit
Anyone with confidential, financial, or personally identifiable data. There's no setting that changes this; it's how the free product is built.
"The biggest drawback to the Public version of Tableau is that any data used in the program is 'public' and therefore not secure: workbooks are saved to the cloud, rather than locally."
Leah Jakaitis Senior Data Analyst, Tulco Labs TrustRadius review"Excellent, mind-blowing variety of visualization wizards." Listed cons: "Expensive Licenses," "Slow rendering when the data volume is huge."
Hiren Mistry Enterprise Data Architect, Worldline TrustRadius reviewPower BI Desktop
The authoring app never requires a license. Sharing what you built with anyone else does, starting at $14 a month.
Power BI Desktop, the Windows application where reports get built, is free forever, per Microsoft's own footnote: it "is available as a free download" with no license gate.
What costs money is everything downstream of building: publishing a report so someone else can view it needs Power BI Pro at $14 per user per month, billed yearly, which caps model size at 1 GB and refreshes at 8 a day. Power BI Premium Per User raises both ceilings, to 100 GB and 48 refreshes, for $24 a month.
The tool's real power sits in DAX, its formula language for calculated fields and custom metrics, and in Power Query for no-code transforms. Both take real time to learn; reviewers describe DAX mistakes as silent, where one misplaced comma produces a wrong number with no error message to catch it.
Strengths
- DAX gives real calculated-field power beyond what a chart-template tool offers.
- Direct Lake connection to Microsoft OneLake, cited by reviewers as cutting refresh delays versus older import-based setups.
- Power Query handles no-code data transforms before a chart ever gets built.
- 150+ official connectors per Microsoft's own count, spanning most common databases and cloud services.
Weaknesses
- No native Mac build; a Mac shop gets only the browser-based service, without the full Desktop app.
- DAX has a steep, unforgiving learning curve where small mistakes produce silently wrong numbers.
- Licensing confusion between Free, Pro, Premium, and Fabric is one of the most repeated complaints across G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius.
- Publicly, universally accessible reporting was called "cost-prohibitive" by more than one reviewer.
Good fit
Teams already standardized on Microsoft 365 and Azure, and Excel-fluent analysts willing to invest in learning DAX for the payoff in modeling power.
Bad fit
Mac-only shops, and solo users or small teams who need to publish a report publicly for free; that tier is priced for organizations, at $14 a user a month, a cost an individual publishing one report rarely justifies.
"The learning curve for DAX can be steep for new users, and the desktop app is Windows-only, which excludes Mac users from the full experience."
Archana R. Data Analyst, enterprise G2 review, Apr 2026"The licensing model can be a bit confusing, especially for new users trying to understand the differences between Power BI Free, Pro, and Premium."
Bien C. Systems and Service Operation Analyst, food production Capterra review, May 2025Datawrapper
Free forever, with a "Created with Datawrapper" badge on every chart until you pay $21 a month to remove it.
Datawrapper's free tier publishes unlimited charts with no view cap and 20-plus chart types plus three dedicated map types, but exports are PNG only and every chart carries Datawrapper's attribution unless you upgrade to Pro at $21 per user per month, which also unlocks PDF and SVG export.
The company was founded in Berlin in 2012 by ex-newsroom staff from the New York Times, NPR, Bloomberg, and ZEIT Online, and it's self-funded entirely by subscription revenue. That funding model shows up in how the free tier is priced: it removes features before it caps usage.
Named newsroom clients include the Philadelphia Inquirer, whose graphics editor has built more than 850 charts with it since 2015, and KFF (Kaiser Health News). What it isn't built for is scale: no data-warehouse connections, no table joins, and reviewers report real friction once a dataset gets large.
Strengths
- 20-plus chart types and three map types, built by a team with real newsroom backgrounds.
- Named clients including the Philadelphia Inquirer and KFF, with case studies naming specific chart counts and workflows.
- No cookies and Do Not Track by default on published embeds, an unusual privacy stance for a hosted tool.
- A stated pledge that published charts stay online indefinitely, even after a subscription lapses.
Weaknesses
- Can't handle large datasets well, and has no data-warehouse connections or table-join support at all.
- Free tier keeps the attribution badge and blocks PDF and SVG export.
- Maps specifically carry a real learning curve; one reviewer who switched from Flourish called troubleshooting a map "clunky."
Good fit
Journalists, comms staff, and anyone who needs one clean, fast, embeddable, mobile-responsive chart or map without a design step.
Bad fit
Anyone with large, multi-table, or warehouse-connected data, or a project that needs a full interactive dashboard, not one chart.
"It's an incredibly user-friendly tool for creating clean, professional data visualizations in minutes. Perfect for journalists and data storytellers."
Michelle C. Journalist, media production Capterra review, Apr 2025"One limitation is its inability to handle large datasets effectively, resulting in delays when creating visuals... it does not have the ability to connect with data warehouses."
Anjani T. Business Analyst and Data Scientist, enterprise G2 review, Oct 2024Flourish
Free while a project stays public and duplicable. Everything past that is now a custom quote; there's no posted price.
Flourish's free tier keeps projects private while they're drafts, but publishing makes a project public and, by Flourish's own default, duplicable by anyone who finds the link, including the underlying data.
Canva acquired Flourish in February 2022 for undisclosed terms, and as of a November 2025 pricing restructure, the paid Presenter tier no longer sells standalone; it's bundled free inside a Canva Business or Enterprise subscription instead. The Publisher and Enterprise tiers, which add private team projects and custom themes, are both "contact us" quotes with no public dollar figure.
What the free tier is genuinely good at is motion: bar chart races, scrollytelling narratives, and animated maps, the format Flourish is best known for and where its named enterprise clients, including the BBC, Sky News, and Deloitte, use it.
Strengths
- Best-known for bar chart races, scrollytelling, and animated maps, formats few other free tools on this page support at all.
- Named enterprise clients include the BBC, Sky News, Deloitte, and Moody's.
- Sky News specifically credits Flourish's Live API with fully automating its visualization pipeline from data ingest to real-time updates.
Weaknesses
- Free-tier published projects are public and duplicable by default, including the underlying data, unless you pay.
- An independent reviewer testing the free tier described its processing speed as slow.
- Data matching is case-sensitive, a common first-time-user trap noted in the same independent review.
Good fit
Newsrooms and comms teams wanting an eye-catching animated or narrative chart fast, with no code required.
Bad fit
Teams needing dashboarding or deep analytics, or anyone whose data can't leave the browser for confidentiality reasons; Flourish stores uploads on its own servers.
"I appreciate Flourish for creating interactive charts for webpages because it enhances readability even for complicated charts, allowing readers to interact and engage more deeply."
Anna M. Business Analyst, mid-market G2 review, Nov 2025"I used the public version of Flourish for this trial, which was functional but very slow at processing and visualizing the data."
Deborah Carver Independent reviewer The Content Technologist, reviewRAWGraphs
No paid tier exists. It's Apache-2.0 licensed, and there's nothing to upgrade to.
RAWGraphs is free and open source under an Apache 2.0 license, maintained by DensityDesign Lab at Politecnico di Milano along with Calibro and Inmagik, and it processes data entirely inside the browser: "no server-side operations or storages are performed," per its own GitHub documentation. There's genuinely no paid tier to compare against, which puts it in a different category from every other tool on this page. Its active GitHub repository carries roughly 9,000 stars.
What sets it apart is chart-type range: alluvial diagrams, beeswarm plots, circle packing, streamgraphs, Voronoi diagrams, and bump charts, none of which show up in Looker Studio, Datawrapper, or Flourish's template libraries. Output is SVG, meant for a finishing pass in Illustrator or Inkscape before publishing.
Strengths
- The widest range of unusual chart types of any tool here, built for data shapes bar and pie charts can't show.
- SVG export edits cleanly in Illustrator or Inkscape for a final publication pass.
- Runs entirely client-side, so sensitive data never leaves the browser or touches a server.
- Used in Panama Papers-adjacent journalism to visualize offshore ownership flows.
Weaknesses
- No native Excel upload; a spreadsheet has to be converted to CSV first.
- Large-dataset exports lag, per reviewers who tested it against real files.
- Not beginner-intuitive, in more than one reviewer's own words.
- Output is a static image; building an interactive chart or dashboard needs a different tool.
Good fit
Designers, data journalists, and researchers who want a fast, unusual static chart and plan to finish it in a vector editor afterward.
Bad fit
A non-technical business user wanting a plug-and-play chart straight from an Excel file, or anyone needing a live, interactive dashboard.
"It doesnt support uploading of .xlsx files directly therefore the file has to be converted to .csv format." [sic]
Faris A. Research Scholar, mid-market G2 review, Mar 2024"It is not user-intuitive as it could be. It is for drafting basic or straightforward graphic designs and data. If what you want is too complicated to graph, the program runs into issues rendering your information."
Verified User Accounting, small business G2 review, Oct 2022Metabase
Free and unlimited the moment you host it yourself. $100 a month the moment self-hosting isn't worth the trouble.
Metabase's open-source edition is free with unlimited users under an AGPL license, and it runs anywhere via a single Docker image. Metabase Cloud, the hosted alternative, starts at $100 a month for five users on the Starter plan, then $6 per additional user.
Pro jumps to $575 a month for ten users and adds row-level permissions, SSO, and embedded analytics for customer-facing dashboards. Its GitHub repository has roughly 48,000 stars, a reasonable proxy for how widely it's deployed versus just downloaded once.
The trade for that free, unlimited self-hosted tier is operational: you're the one keeping the server patched and running. Multiple reviewers describe self-hosted setup and upgrades as a real burden, and one reviewer called the open-source edition "unviable" for offering dashboards to external customers, since fine-grained multi-tenant permissions are a paid-tier feature.
Strengths
- A no-code "Ask a question" builder for non-technical users, plus a full native SQL editor for analysts.
- 19 officially maintained database connectors and 11 more from the community, self-hosted only.
- Ships as a single Docker image, so deployment doesn't require a dedicated infrastructure team to start.
Weaknesses
- Self-hosted setup and version upgrades are a recurring, named source of friction in reviews.
- Performance and load-time complaints show up repeatedly, especially under concurrent use.
- The open-source edition lacks the permission granularity needed for customer-facing, multi-tenant dashboards.
- Visual customization sits below Tableau or Power BI once a dashboard gets complex.
Good fit
Engineering teams comfortable self-hosting who want internal BI without a per-seat SaaS bill, and SQL-literate teams building a self-service layer for everyone else.
Bad fit
Teams with no one to own the hosted infrastructure, or anyone needing to embed dashboards for outside customers on the free tier specifically.
"If self-hosting, it can be a real pain to set up. The self-hosting guide, while very detailed may not be ideal for everyone. We also had some challenges when connecting our data source as the documentation was not very clear."
Verified Reviewer Software Engineer, health & wellness Capterra review, Jul 2023"Using to offer to customers with a multi tenant setup: unviable, at least in the open source version... There's no support for code versioning."
Verified Reviewer Business Intelligence Developer Capterra review, Feb 2021Gigasheet
Opens the billion-row file that crashes Excel. Its own charts only plot the first 1,000 values of it.
Gigasheet's viewer holds up to a billion rows and 250 GB with no install, running entirely in a browser, which is the whole pitch: someone handed a CSV or JSON export too large for Excel or Google Sheets can filter, group, and clean it without standing up a database.
Free-tier editing is capped, and Premium Individual starts at $75 a user a month billed annually for 25 million rows a sheet, with a separate MRF Explorer tier at $295 a month for JSON support and a full billion rows.
The catch, confirmed directly in Gigasheet's own support documentation, is that its native charts "only [show] data shown on the first 1000 values." A tool built to hold a billion rows visualizes at most the first thousand of them, which makes it a data-prep step before a chart tool, not a replacement for one.
Strengths
- Opens files that crash Excel outright; one reviewer cites a 3GB CSV his brand-new Macbook couldn't even open.
- No install, browser-based, with built-in data-cleanup tooling for messy exports.
- Named use cases include log-file analysis and OSINT/leaked-data review, both independently confirmed by separate reviewers.
Weaknesses
- Native charts plot only the first 1,000 values, confirmed in Gigasheet's own support docs.
- No in-cell editing; a repeated, independent complaint across many separate reviewers.
- Not a substitute for a real BI or visualization tool, per an independent review that compared it directly to Power BI.
Good fit
Anyone handed a CSV or JSON file too large for Excel who needs to filter, merge, or clean it fast, without setting up a database first.
Bad fit
Anyone wanting a polished, presentation-ready chart. Pair it with Datawrapper or Flourish for that step; Gigasheet's own charting tops out at 1,000 plotted values.
"It can handle a billion rows that my excel just can't seem to work with. Pivots are fast, buttons are easy to find. This is my favourite spreadsheet tool for large datasets."
Ruthvik M. Senior Audience Analyst, IT services Capterra review, Mar 2025"User friendly interface, multiple ways to combine filters, capacity to process very large files... After starting off free, many features now require a subscription, which is not cheap. This makes the service less affordable for, say, independent researchers."
Verified User Research, enterprise G2 review, Jun 2025Python: matplotlib, seaborn, Plotly, and Bokeh
Free forever, permissively licensed, no vendor to outgrow. The learning curve is the actual price.
None of the core Python visualization libraries charge anything: matplotlib is BSD-compatible, seaborn is BSD-3-Clause, Plotly's Python library is MIT licensed, and so is Bokeh. matplotlib alone pulls roughly 8.4 million downloads a day on PyPI, and Python placed third among languages developers report using in Stack Overflow's 2024 survey, at 51 percent.
The realistic paid tier a reader would eventually hit isn't the charting library at all, it's Plotly Cloud, $29 per seat a month, needed only once a chart has to become a hosted, shareable app, unlike a script run locally.
The tradeoff shows up immediately in developer commentary: matplotlib's own long-time users describe it as simultaneously indispensable and painful to use, since higher-level libraries like seaborn and Plotly Express are themselves built on top of it for exactly this reason.
Strengths
- Full low-level control; every other library on this list, including seaborn and pandas' own plotting, is built on top of matplotlib.
- Current default color palettes are colorblind-considered and perceptually uniform out of the box.
- Integrates directly with pandas, Jupyter, and scikit-learn, reusing an environment an analyst already has open.
Weaknesses
- matplotlib exposes two incompatible plotting interfaces, which muddies its own documentation and search results.
- Layout and spacing still need manual tuning even from developers who otherwise defend the library.
- Bokeh, despite a cleaner API, is missing common chart types matplotlib has, including a straightforward histogram.
- Turning a script into a shareable interactive app requires a separate framework like Dash, plus hosting.
Good fit
Analysts and data scientists already working in pandas and Jupyter who need a reproducible or highly customized chart, version-controlled alongside the rest of their code.
Bad fit
A non-technical business user who just needs a chart without writing code. Even Python's own users point that crowd toward Plotly Express, Tableau, Power BI, or Excel instead.
"matplotlib sucks, but it's going to be really hard to replace... as soon as you want strange, lower level, customizable things, you start having to build in little hacks and workarounds."
A developer using the handle "mlurp" Comment, May 2021 Hacker News"By far my favorite feature of matplotlib is that it produces readable and accessible plots by default. Font sizes and linewidths are not too small, the default color palette is colorblind-friendly."
A developer using the handle "fsh" Comment, Nov 2023 Hacker NewsSteps to Create a Chart in Each Free Tool
Looker Studio and Tableau Public
Sign in with a Google account, connect a Google Sheet as the data source, and create a report from a template in under ten minutes. To create a Tableau Public visualization, connect a spreadsheet or a database, build the chart in the free desktop app, and publish it straight to the public gallery; there's no separate account step first.
Power BI Desktop
Connect to a data source, model the tables, and create visualizations on the report canvas before exporting or sharing. This is the one free tool on this page where the modeling step comes first, ahead of the chart.
Datawrapper and Flourish
Both let users paste a table and create a chart or a set of maps on the same page, with no separate editor to open first. Community resources, tutorials, and documentation fill in the rest for anyone stuck past that point; neither ships with paid support on the free plan.
RAWGraphs, Metabase, Gigasheet, and Python
In RAWGraphs, upload a file and build a chart by dragging fields onto axes; Metabase works the same way once a database connection exists. Gigasheet's workflow starts with import and cleanup, since its own charting tops out at 1,000 plotted values. Python users write a few lines of matplotlib, seaborn, or Plotly code and run it locally, which keeps every dataset that passes through off a vendor's servers entirely.
Which Free Tool Fits Your Workflow
Coding required is the fastest filter: every tool above except the Python libraries needs none, so it only matters for a team that already writes code elsewhere. After that, the next filter is what happens after the chart ships. A tool built to publish to a public website, like Tableau Public or Flourish's free tier, is a poor fit for internal-only dashboards, and a self-hosted platform like Metabase is a poor fit for someone who just wants one chart out the door today.
Price is the third filter, and it splits the list cleanly: Looker Studio, Power BI Desktop, Datawrapper, Metabase, and Gigasheet all gate real features behind a specific dollar figure once a project grows past personal use. Tableau Public and RAWGraphs don't offer a private or paid step-up on the same product at all. Flourish sits in between, free while public, custom-quoted the moment it isn't.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which data visualization tool is free?
Looker Studio, Tableau Public, Power BI Desktop, Datawrapper, Flourish, RAWGraphs, and self-hosted Metabase all have a genuine free tier that never expires, unlike a trial. Which one fits depends on if the chart needs to stay private, how much data it needs to hold, and if coding is an option.
Can ChatGPT do data visualization?
An AI tool like ChatGPT can describe what a chart should show or write the code to build one, but it doesn't render an interactive, publishable chart on its own for free the way Looker Studio or Datawrapper does. It works as a starting point for a script; building and publishing the finished chart still needs a dedicated tool.
Is there a free alternative to Tableau?
Tableau Public itself is the free version of Tableau, with the trade that every chart becomes public. For a private alternative, Looker Studio, Power BI Desktop, or the open source RAWGraphs and Metabase all offer a free tier that doesn't force charts to be public.
What are the top 5 data visualization tools?
Among free options specifically, the five names that come up most often across independent reviews:
- Looker Studio
- Tableau Public
- Power BI Desktop
- Datawrapper
- Flourish
Each is suited to a different combination of privacy, data source, and chart format.
Picking a free data visualization tool comes down to the same three questions every time: does the chart need to stay private, how much data does it need to hold, and is writing code an option for the people building it. Looker Studio and Power BI Desktop cover private dashboards well.
Tableau Public, Datawrapper, and Flourish trade privacy for speed on a single public chart. RAWGraphs, Metabase, Gigasheet, and the Python libraries trade a hosted signup for full control. None of them requires a paid plan to start.