Question 1

What is a heatmap?

Accepted Answer

A heatmap is a table in which each cell is colored by its value — light for low values and dark for high ones. It reveals patterns across two dimensions at once, such as the busiest hours of each weekday, sales by region and month, or test scores by student and subject.

Question 2

How do I enter data for the heatmap?

Accepted Answer

Paste a table straight from Excel or Google Sheets, or type comma-separated rows. The first row holds the column labels, the first column holds the row labels, and every other cell is a number. Empty cells are shown with a striped pattern to mark missing data.

Question 3

How are the cell colors calculated?

Accepted Answer

The colors run along a single-hue scale from the smallest to the largest value in your table, so the lightest cell is the minimum and the darkest cell is the maximum. The legend under the chart shows the full scale with both end values, and the text in each cell switches between white and dark to stay readable.

Question 4

Can I change the heatmap colors?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Choose a blue, green, orange, purple or red scale, or pick any custom color and the tool builds a light-to-dark scale from it. You can also hide the numbers in the cells, change the number of decimal places, and set the background, title and font colors.

Question 5

When should I use a heatmap instead of a bar chart?

Accepted Answer

Use a heatmap when your data has two categories and one value — like day and hour, or product and month — and you want to spot patterns, peaks and gaps across the whole grid. Use a bar or line chart when exact comparisons matter more than the overall pattern, since color is harder to judge precisely than length.

Day	6am	9am	12pm	3pm	6pm	9pm
Mon	12	85	140	120	160	90
Tue	10	90	150	125	170	95
Wed	14	95	155	130	165	100
Thu	11	88	148	128	175	110
Fri	9	80	135	115	190	140
Sat	5	40	110	130	150	120
Sun	4	30	95	105	120	80

Free Heatmap Maker Online — Color-Scaled Data Table & Download | Graph Maker

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Related Chart Tools

Day	6am	9am	12pm	3pm	6pm	9pm
Mon	12	85	140	120	160	90
Tue	10	90	150	125	170	95
Wed	14	95	155	130	165	100
Thu	11	88	148	128	175	110
Fri	9	80	135	115	190	140
Sat	5	40	110	130	150	120
Sun	4	30	95	105	120	80

Day	6am	9am	12pm	3pm	6pm	9pm
Mon	12	85	140	120	160	90
Tue	10	90	150	125	170	95
Wed	14	95	155	130	165	100
Thu	11	88	148	128	175	110
Fri	9	80	135	115	190	140
Sat	5	40	110	130	150	120
Sun	4	30	95	105	120	80

Day	6am	9am	12pm	3pm	6pm	9pm
Mon	12	85	140	120	160	90
Tue	10	90	150	125	170	95
Wed	14	95	155	130	165	100
Thu	11	88	148	128	175	110
Fri	9	80	135	115	190	140
Sat	5	40	110	130	150	120
Sun	4	30	95	105	120	80