How to Make a Sunburst Chart in Google Sheets with AI

A sunburst chart is a powerful way to visualize hierarchical data, going beyond a simple pie chart to show how different parts make up a whole across multiple levels. While Google Sheets has a built-in option to create them, the process of structuring your data can be tedious. This article will walk you through how to create a sunburst chart in Google Sheets and introduce a faster, AI-powered way to do it without the manual data prep.

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What Exactly Is a Sunburst Chart?

Think of a sunburst chart as a multi-layered pie chart. The innermost circle represents the top-level categories, and as you move outwards, each ring is divided to show a breakdown of the ring section inside it. It gets its name because its radiating slices resemble the rays of the sun.

This structure makes it perfect for displaying part-to-whole relationships across a hierarchy. For example, you could see overall website traffic sources in the center circle (like Organic, Paid, and Direct), and the outer circle could break down each of those sources into more specific channels (like Google and Bing for Organic, or Facebook Ads and Google Ads for Paid).

Each slice's angle and size correspond to its value, giving you an immediate visual sense of which segments are the largest contributors to the whole.

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When Should You Use a Sunburst Chart?

Sunburst charts aren't for every dataset. They shine when you have hierarchical data - data that has clear parent-child relationships and can be nested into categories and subcategories. Here are some common scenarios where a sunburst chart is an excellent choice:

• Marketing Campaign Analysis: Visualize your marketing spend or performance. The inner ring could be the high-level channel (e.g., Paid Social, Search Ads, Content), the next ring could be the platform (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Blog), and the outer ring could be specific campaigns.
• Sales Performance Breakdown: Show revenue by geographic region. You could structure it as Continent > Country > State/Province to quickly see where the majority of your sales come from.
• E-commerce Product Analysis: Break down product sales to understand inventory and customer preferences. A typical structure would be Product Department > Category > Sub-Category > Specific Product.
• Budget Allocation: Track how a company or team budget is distributed. For example, map out budget by Department > Team > Project > Expense Type.
• Website Traffic Analysis: Understand where your users are coming from by breaking down traffic by Source > Medium > Campaign.

Avoid using sunburst charts if your data is not hierarchical or if you have too many levels (more than 3 or 4), as this can make the chart cluttered and difficult to read.

Preparing Your Data in Google Sheets

The single most important - and often trickiest - part of creating a sunburst chart in Google Sheets is formatting your data correctly. The chart builder needs a specific structure to understand the parent-child relationships in your hierarchy.

You need to organize your data into three distinct columns:

1. Labels: This column contains the name for each individual slice of the chart (the "child").
2. Parents: This column identifies which category the "label" belongs to. For top-level categories, this cell should be left blank.
3. Values: This column contains the numerical value that determines the size of each slice. It's important that parent categories should not have a value, their size will be calculated automatically as the sum of their children.

Example: Formatting Marketing Budget Data

Let's say your raw data looks like a simple list or is scattered across different reports. You can't just highlight it and create a chart. You have to restructure it. Imagine your goal is to visualize a quarterly marketing budget.

Here’s how you’d format the data in Google Sheets:

Notice a few key things in the structure:

• Blank Parents: The top-level categories ("Digital Advertising" and "Content Marketing") have their "Parents" cell left empty. This tells Google Sheets they are the starting point, forming the inner circle of the chart.
• Values for Children Only: Only the final child elements (like "Google Ads" or "Blog Posts") have a value in the "Values" column. The parent's size will be the sum of its children's values. For instance, the "Digital Advertising" slice will automatically have a value of $35,000 ($20,000 + $15,000).
• Clear Relationships: It's easy to see that "Google Ads" is a child of "Digital Advertising," which is a top-level category. This simple, clear structure is what powers the chart.

How to Make a Sunburst Chart (The Manual Way)

Once your data is properly formatted, creating the chart itself is relatively straightforward. Just follow these steps.

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Step 1: Select Your Data

Click and drag your cursor to highlight the entire data range you formatted, including the headers.

Step 2: Insert Chart

With your data highlighted, navigate to the top menu and click Insert > Chart.

Step 3: Choose the Sunburst Chart Type

Google Sheets will likely try to guess what chart you want, but it's rarely a sunburst chart. In the Chart editor sidebar that appears on the right, click the dropdown under Chart type. Scroll down to the "Other" section and select Sunburst chart.

As soon as you select it, Google Sheets should automatically map your columns (Labels, Parents, and Values) correctly and generate the chart.

Step 4: Customize Your Chart (Optional)

Your sunburst chart is now ready, but you can refine its appearance. In the Chart editor, switch from the Setup tab to the Customize tab. Here you can tweak things like:

• Chart style: Change the background color and border.
• Sunburst: Adjust the colors of the slices and format the text that appears on them. A useful setting here is the Max levels, in case you want to display fewer levels of your hierarchy than are present in your data.
• Chart & axis titles: Give your chart a clear, descriptive title.

After a few adjustments, you'll have a finished chart ready for your report or presentation.

The Drawback of the Manual Method

While an effective visualization, the process reveals a few significant pain points, especially for busy marketing and sales teams:

• Tedious Data Formatting: The biggest bottleneck is preparing the data. Taking raw numbers from different sources (Google Analytics, your CRM, ad platforms) and manually restructuring them into a Labels-Parents-Values format is time-consuming and prone to copy-paste errors.
• It's a Static Snapshot: The chart doesn't update automatically. If your data changes, you have to manually update the sheet and potentially hope the chart reflects it correctly. It's a static image, not a live look at your performance.
• Difficult to Iterate: What if you want to see the same breakdown but only for a specific period? Or filtered to exclude certain campaigns? Each new question requires creating a new dataset and a new chart, discouraging deeper data exploration.

A Faster, Smarter Way: Create a Sunburst Chart With AI

Instead of manually wrangling data and clicking through menus, modern AI-powered analytics tools allow you to create charts and dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. The entire workflow shifts from building to asking.

The process is far simpler:

1. Connect Your Data Sources: First, you simply connect your tools - like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Shopify, or even a Google Sheet - directly to the platform. This completely eliminates the need for manual CSV exports and data restructuring.
2. Ask in Plain English: Next, you just type what you want to see. Instead of organizing columns, you write a prompt like you're talking to a data analyst.
3. Get an Instant Visualization: The AI interprets your request, pulls the relevant real-time data from your connected sources, structures it correctly behind the scenes, and generates the chart for you in seconds.

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Example Prompts for an AI Tool

Rather than formatting data, your entire effort is focused on asking the right question, such as:

• "Build me a sunburst chart of our Shopify sales this quarter, broken down by product category and then vendor."
• "Show a sunburst visualizing website sessions from Google Analytics over the past 30 days. Break it down by channel, then source."
• "Create a sunburst chart of our HubSpot deals closed this month, segmented by sales rep, then by deal stage."

This approach transforms data analysis from a chore into a conversation. Follow-up questions are just as easy. If you don't like the sunburst, you can simply type, "Show this as a bar chart instead," and it modifies the visualization instantly. This is the difference between spending an hour fighting with spreadsheets versus spending 30 seconds getting an answer.

Final Thoughts

Sunburst charts are an excellent tool for visualizing hierarchical data, and Google Sheets gives you the ability to create them manually if you're willing to do the careful data prep. This manual approach gives you control but can be slow and rigid, especially when you need to answer new questions quickly.

Here at Graphed, we built our platform to eliminate this exact kind of friction. Instead of having you spend your time formatting data for a sunburst chart, we let you create one instantly with a simple prompt. We connect directly to your marketing and sales data sources, so your dashboards are always pulling live, real-time information. It lets your team get straight to the insights without getting bogged down in the time-consuming process of manual report building.