How to Make a Butterfly Chart in Tableau

A butterfly chart is a fantastic way to visually compare two distinct segments of your data side-by-side. Instead of making your audience jump between two separate bar charts, this visualization places them back-to-back, sharing a central axis to make comparisons immediate and intuitive. This tutorial walks you through exactly how to build a dynamic and insightful butterfly chart in Tableau.

What Is a Butterfly Chart? (And When Should You Use One?)

A butterfly chart, also known as a tornado chart or pyramid chart, is essentially two horizontal bar charts placed adjacent to each other. They share a common central category axis, and the bars extend outwards in opposite directions, creating a shape that resembles butterfly wings.

This layout is powerful because it lets you quickly spot similarities, differences, and patterns between two groups. It's the perfect choice when you need to answer comparative questions about your data.

Use a butterfly chart when you want to:

• Compare Demographic Data: One of the most common uses. You can compare survey responses, purchasing habits, or satisfaction scores between two demographic groups like 'Male vs. Female', 'Under 35 vs. Over 35', or 'New Customers vs. Returning Customers'.
• Analyze Before-and-After Scenarios: Show the impact of a marketing campaign, product launch, or strategy change by comparing metrics like sales or engagement 'Before the Campaign vs. After the Campaign'.
• Visualize Survey Responses: Compare positive and negative responses to a survey question. For example, you can plot 'Agree' responses on one side and 'Disagree' on the other for a series of questions.
• Track Opposing Metrics: Show metrics that are naturally in opposition, like 'Revenue vs. Costs' or 'New Users vs. Churned Users' for each month or product line.

Gathering and Preparing Your Data

Like any visualization, a butterfly chart needs data that's structured properly. For this type of chart, you'll typically need at least three columns:

1. A central dimension: This will form the categories down the middle of your chart (e.g., Age Group, Product Category, Survey Question).
2. A measure for the left wing: The first data set you want to compare (e.g., Male Respondents).
3. A measure for the right wing: The second data set you want to compare (e.g., Female Respondents).

For this tutorial, we'll use a simple dataset showing preference for different social media platforms, broken down by gender. Our data might look something like this:

You can create this in a simple Excel or Google Sheet to follow along. Save it as a CSV or Excel file that you can connect to in Tableau.

Building the Butterfly Chart in Tableau: Step-by-Step

Once you have your data ready, open Tableau and let's start building. The core trick to a butterfly chart is making one of your measures negative so its bars extend to the left. Don't worry, we'll hide the negative signs later for a clean look.

Step 1: Connect to Your Data Source

First things first. Open Tableau and connect to your saved data file (e.g., your Excel or CSV file with the social media data).

Step 2: Create a Negative Calculated Field

To get the bars for the "left wing" of our butterfly to push left from the center, we need to make the measure a negative number. We achieve this with a simple calculated field.

• Right-click anywhere in the Data pane on the left sidebar and select Create Calculated Field.
• Name the field something descriptive, like 'Male Users (Negative)'.
• In the formula box, enter the following code. Just put a minus sign in front of your measure:

- [Male Users]

• Click OK.

Now, you'll have a new measure in your Data pane. This will be the measure for our left side, and the original [Female Users] measure will be our right side.

Step 3: Build the Basic Structure

Now we'll get the fields onto the canvas to create the initial charts.

• Drag your central dimension, [Platform], to the Rows shelf.
• Drag your new negative measure, [Male Users (Negative)], to the Columns shelf.
• Drag your original positive measure, [Female Users], to the Columns shelf and place it to the right of the first measure.

At this point, you should see two separate horizontal bar charts on your worksheet. One goes left (negative) and one goes right (positive). Now, let's combine them.

Step 4: Combine the Charts with a Dual Axis

The Dual Axis feature is what brings our two separate charts together into a single visualization.

• Right-click on the second green pill in the Columns shelf (the one for SUM(Female Users)) and select Dual Axis from the dropdown menu.

Tableau will merge the two, but it might not look right just yet — it often defaults to filled circles instead of bars. That's perfectly normal.

Step 5: Synchronize and Format the Axes

This step is crucial for making the chart readable and accurate. We need to make sure both axes use the same scale and that the left axis doesn't show confusing negative numbers.

1. Synchronize the Axis: Right-click on the top axis (or any of the axes) and select Synchronize Axis. This ensures that a bar representing 500 on the left is the same length as a bar for 500 on the right.
2. Format the Left Axis Numbers: We want to hide the minus signs on the left (top) axis.

• Right-click on the top axis and select Format.
• In the Format pane on the left, under the Scale section, choose Numbers.
• Select Custom and paste the following format into the box: #,##0, #,##0 This simple code tells Tableau to display negative numbers in the same format as positive numbers, effectively hiding the negative signs.

1. Reverse the Top Axis (Optional but Recommended): For a more traditional butterfly look, you can reverse the scale of the top axis so the numbers radiate out from zero in the middle. Right-click the top axis, select Edit Axis, and in the dialog box, check the box for Reversed scale.

Step 6: Change the Mark Type to Bars

Now, let's make sure both sides are displayed as bars.

• In the Marks card area, you'll see separate tabs for each of your measures (one for SUM(Male Users (Negative)) and another for SUM(Female Users)).
• Click on each tab individually and change the mark type from 'Automatic' to Bar.
• You should now have a proper bar chart structure. You can also adjust the size of the bars using the Size slider to make them thicker or thinner.

Polishing Your Butterfly Chart for Presentation

Your chart is functional, but a few finishing touches will make it much easier to read and present.

Adding Labels for Clarity

You want your audience to see the actual values for each side. It's important to use the original positive measure for the labels on the left side, not the negative one we created.

• Find the SUM(Male Users (Negative)) section on the Marks card.
• Drag the original [Male Users] measure from the Data pane onto the Label box within that section. The correct positive numbers will now appear on the left set of bars.
• Find the SUM(Female Users) section on the Marks card.
• Drag the [Female Users] measure onto the Label box there.

You can adjust the alignment and font of the labels to ensure they are readable and don’t overlap with the bars. Sometimes placing them at the end of the bars (right-aligned for the left side and left-aligned for the right) works best.

Cleaning Up and Customizing

• Color: Use the Color property on each Marks card to assign distinct colors to your two groups. For example, make the male user bars blue and the female user bars orange.
• Tooltips: Hover over the bars to see your tooltips. You can customize these by clicking the Tooltip button on the Marks card. Make sure the tooltip for the left side also uses the original '[Male Users]' field so it shows a positive number on hover.
• Central Labels: To make the chart even clearer, you can show the central dimension labels between the two wings. Drag the [Platform] dimension onto the Label box on the Marks card for one of your measures, then align it to the center. You may need to create a separate "zero line" calculated field for this if you want it perfectly centered, but for many cases, aligning this suffices.
• Remove Clutter: Hide unnecessary gridlines, axis titles, and field labels to give your chart a clean, professional look. Right-click on them and choose 'Hide'.

You should now have a polished, easy-to-read butterfly chart ready for your dashboard!

Final Thoughts

Building a butterfly chart in Tableau is a great skill that turns a simple comparison into a compelling story. By making one measure negative and bringing it all together with a dual axis, you've created a visualization that makes comparing data between two groups simple and intuitive.

Crafting powerful charts in tools like Tableau is rewarding, but we know the process can often feel time-consuming, with a significant learning curve. If you're ever short on time or just want to get straight to the insights, that's why we built Graphed to help. Instead of manual clicks and calculated fields, you can connect your data and just ask for what you need in plain English — like "create a chart comparing male and female users by platform" — and get a live, interactive visualization in seconds, giving you that time back to focus on strategy.