Pie chart

Circular part-to-whole chart for very small N.

pie divides a circle into proportional slices, each representing a category's share of the whole. Honours displayAsPercentage, showTotal, showLabels, showValues, sliceMax, and sliceGroupLabel.

When to use

Simple proportional splits with 2–5 categories
Values near visually meaningful fractions (25 %, 50 %, 75 %)
General audiences where the chart needs to carry emotional weight
Sidebar or callout context — not the main analytical chart

When NOT to use

More than 5 categories — small slices become meaningless; consider grouping with sliceMax and sliceGroupLabel
Comparing similar-sized portions — the human eye is poor at judging angles
Comparing multiple pie charts against each other (use small multiples of bar charts instead)
When precise values matter — a bar chart is almost always more readable

Example

bpc

chart pie {
  title = "Asia is home to nearly 60% of the world's population"
  description = "Estimated share, 2024"
  source = "United Nations"
  sourceUrl = "https://population.un.org"
  colorPalette = "Klimt"
  legendPosition = "right"
  tooltips = true

  data {
    "Asia" = 59.4
    "Africa" = 18.3
    "Europe" = 9.3
    "Latin America" = 8.2
    "North America" = 4.8
  }
}

Common pitfalls

Too many slices destroy readability — cap at five and use sliceMax to merge the tail
Exploded or 3D pie effects distort proportions; Blueprint Chart doesn't render them, and you shouldn't approximate them elsewhere
As Edward Tufte famously noted: the only thing worse than a pie chart is several of them

donut — same encoding with a central slot for a total or label
bar-horizontal — almost always more readable for precise comparison
bar-stacked — when you want composition across several totals

Pie chart ​

When to use ​

When NOT to use ​

Example ​

Common pitfalls ​

Related types ​

See also ​

Pie chart

When to use

When NOT to use

Example

Common pitfalls

Related types

See also