Waterfall Charts, No Excel Needed

In Excel 2016 and later, insert a 'Waterfall' chart from the chart gallery. In older versions you must build it with stacked invisible bars, which requires manual offset calculations. MakeCharts offers a dedicated waterfall tool that skips all of that — just add your labels, values, and bar types, and the chart draws itself.

A waterfall chart shows how an initial value is affected by a series of positive and negative changes to reach a final value. It is most common in finance for P&L bridges, cash flow analysis, and budget variance, but also useful in project management and personal budgeting.

Yes. MakeCharts is a free online waterfall chart maker that requires no Excel installation or spreadsheet skills. Enter your data directly, choose bar types, customize colors, and export in minutes — all in your browser.

A standard bar chart shows each value as an independent bar from zero. A waterfall chart shows bars that float at the cumulative total, so each segment visually builds on the previous one. This makes it easy to trace how individual items contribute to a final total or net value.

In MakeCharts, set a bar's type to 'Subtotal' to draw it as a full bar anchored at zero rather than a floating segment. This is useful for mid-point checkpoints like gross profit before you continue with further deductions.

Yes. The Color Settings panel lets you pick a separate color for Increase, Decrease, Total, and Subtotal bars. Changes apply instantly so you can match your brand or presentation theme without any manual formatting.

The core waterfall chart builder is free with no sign-up required. Free accounts include all chart styles, unlimited downloads, and a set of free AI credits. Paid plans add more AI credits, file upload, and embed codes.

Yes. Toggle 'Show value labels' in Display Settings to add a number on each bar. You can also set a value prefix (e.g. '$') or suffix (e.g. 'K') in General Settings to format the labels without manually editing every bar.