Flourish → Chartlapse · bar chart race
Bring the spreadsheet. Build the video in your browser.
If your data already uses one row per participant and one column per date, you have a practical starting point. Chartlapse accepts that wide layout, keeps raw workbook rows local by default, and exports time-based visuals from the same checked Project Document.
This is a job-specific comparison for bar chart race video—not an overall product ranking.
- Wide + long
- input layouts
- 16:9 + 9:16
- native compositions
- WEBM · MP4 · GIF
- animation exports
Checked facts
What changes in this workflow
Flourish statements below are limited to its current pricing table and official Bar Chart Race or export documentation. Chartlapse statements describe the current public product. *MP4 depends on browser H.264 support.| Workflow question | Flourish official position | Chartlapse current behavior |
|---|---|---|
| Direct video export | The current pricing table lists Video under Enterprise. The help center describes an MP4 Story export that Flourish must enable, with a 300-second maximum and no audio inside the Story editor. A standalone visualization must be placed in a Story; general chart guidance otherwise recommends screen capture.1,2,3 | WebM · MP4 (when H.264 WebCodecs or MediaRecorder is available) · GIF (dense 6fps, max 120 frames). Creator makes these animation exports from the checked Project Document. The same export surface supports 16:9 and 9:16, with optional device-local audio for supported WebM or MP4 codecs. |
| Bar race spreadsheet | The official Bar Chart Race workflow expects wide, cumulative data: one row per participant, one column per stage, and running totals. Its long-to-wide guide uses an Excel or Google Sheets pivot table.4,5,6 | Creator accepts that same row-and-period wide shape, or long item/time/value rows. Each value remains the observation for its period; no cumulative conversion is forced. |
| Workbook privacy | Flourish says unpublished projects and uploaded data are private by default. Its privacy and security pages say uploaded content is stored in the service, hosted on AWS with customer projects primarily in the EEA.1,8,9 | Raw workbook bytes and table rows are parsed in browser memory and are not uploaded for ordinary planning or preview. Explicit share or cloud save stores the validated Project Document, not the original workbook bytes. |
| What publishing changes | On Free, a published project becomes public and duplicable. Paid plans provide controls over duplication and access according to plan.7 | Local creation needs no sign-in. Publishing a share link is a separate explicit action and stores a validated Project Document for the documented retention period. |
| Published pricing | Flourish publishes Free, Presenter, Publisher, and Enterprise feature tiers. Presenter comes through Canva Business; Publisher and Enterprise route to sales without a numeric price on the Flourish pricing page.1,10 | The current public test has no paid-plan gate in Creator or its export controls. Future pricing has not been announced. |
Migration guide
Keep the data meaning explicit
A spreadsheet layout can transfer. A Flourish design, Story, caption set, or theme does not transfer automatically.- 01
Keep the entity and stage columns
Start with the sheet used by the Bar Chart Race: one entity per row, then ascending year or YYYY-MM columns. LABEL can hold the entity name; IMG_URL is optional.
- 02
Upload the wide sheet as-is
Choose the existing .xlsx in Creator, or compare it with the downloadable wide template. Chartlapse detects the period columns locally and shows the mapped table before the Project is committed.
- 03
Do not guess at cumulative meaning
Chartlapse intentionally does not auto-detect or reverse running totals: a rising series can be either valid observations or cumulative values. Existing cumulative totals stay cumulative unless you explicitly replace them with period values.
- 04
Check, compose, and export
Confirm the mapped values and missing-data policy, choose 16:9 or 9:16, add a local audio file if needed, then export the supported video format from the checked Preview.
Scope boundary
What this page does not claim
- It does not import Flourish themes, captions, Stories, interactions, or account permissions.
- It does not replace Flourish's broad interactive-embed, scrollytelling, live-data, or team-publishing workflows.
- It does not claim that every Flourish template needs wide or cumulative data; those statements are specific to the official Bar Chart Race workflow.
- It does not promise MP4 in every browser. WebM remains the primary offline-CFR path when H.264 encoding is unavailable.
Facts reviewed · 2026-08-27
Official sources used for this comparison
Open the original pages before making a purchasing or migration decision; plan details and product capabilities can change. External product facts may change after this date.- 01Flourish pricing
- 02How to download your stories as a video
- 03How to create a video or GIF
- 04Bar chart race — an overview
- 05How to make your data cumulative
- 06How to change the format of your data with pivot tables
- 07Controlling access with different account types
- 08Flourish privacy policy
- 09Flourish security
- 10Presenter plan FAQ
Flourish and Canva are trademarks of their respective owners. Chartlapse is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Flourish or Canva.
Flourish → Chartlapse · bar chart race