Keep this printable for later

The Sankey Diagram

A one-page Sankey diagram — the flow chart that answers "where does it all go." A quantity leaves a column of sources on the left and arrives at a column of destinations on the right, and the width of every ribbon between them is proportional to how much flows along it, so the fat bands and the thin ones show at a glance where the weight of the total actually lands. Each node's height is the sum of everything passing through it, and because the ribbons stack edge to edge inside every node nothing is wasted or double-counted — the diagram is honest by construction. It is the right picture the moment a single total fans out into parts that each have their own story: a month's take-home pay into housing, food, savings and fun; website visitors into signups, browses and bounces; job applicants through screen, interview and offer; a country's energy into the sectors that burn it. Where a stacked bar flattens the split into one column and a pie hides the connections entirely, a Sankey keeps both ends visible at once, so you see not just how big each destination is but which source fed it — and ribbons coloured by their source read as families as they cross. List one flow per line as a source, a destination and a value and the ribbons size, colour and stack themselves; leave it blank to print an empty frame and sketch the flows by hand.

Landscape
1 page
Tracking

Best for: Showing where a total splits and goes — a budget into categories, traffic into outcomes, applicants through stages, energy into uses — as proportional ribbons from sources on the left to destinations on the right.

Customize

A still life that evokes the The Sankey Diagram

Build your sankey diagram

Where a total splits and goes.

A Sankey diagram is the picture for "where does it all go." A quantity leaves a column of sources on the left and arrives at a column of destinations on the right, and the width of every ribbon between them is proportional to how much flows along it — so the fat bands and the thin ones tell you at a glance where the weight of the total actually lands. Each node's height is the sum of everything passing through it, and because the ribbons stack edge to edge inside every node, no space is wasted and nothing is double-counted: the diagram is honest by construction. It is the right chart the moment a single total fans out into parts that each have their own story — a month's take-home pay into housing, food, savings and fun; website visitors into signups, browses and bounces; job applicants through screen, interview and offer; a country's energy into the sectors that burn it. Where a stacked bar flattens the split into one column and a pie hides the connections entirely, a Sankey keeps both ends visible at once, so you can see not just how big each destination is but which source fed it. List one flow per line as a source, a destination and a value and the ribbons size, colour and stack themselves; leave it blank to print an empty frame and sketch the flows by hand.

How it works

One flow per line — Source > Target | value.
Width is value — thick ribbons carry more.
Colour follows the source — flows read as families.

Landscape, one page. Up to 36 flows.

Load a worked example.

Then make it your own.

Name the total you're tracing.

What splits and goes somewhere — a monthly budget, website traffic, an applicant pipeline, an energy supply.

Flow of

Title

Subtitle (optional)

List each flow.

One flow per line, up to 36 — a source, then >, then a destination, then | and its value, like Salary > Housing | 1800. Reuse the same names to build up columns; every distinct name on the left is a source, on the right a destination.

Flows — one per line, "Source > Target | value"

One flow per line, like Salary > Housing | 1800 — a source, a destination and a value.

Unit (optional)

Paper size

No account required. No data saved.

Live preview

Generating preview…