Bubble plot | the R Graph Gallery

A bubble chart is a scatterplot

A bubble chart is basically a scatterplot with a third numeric variable used for circle size. Thus, remember all the tips described in the scatterplot section also apply here.

Scatterplot section

Step by step with ggplot2

ggplot2 allows to create bubble chart thanks to the geom_point() function. Next examples will lead you through the process step by step:

Basic bubble chart

The most basic bubble chart you can build with R and gglot2 with geom_point()

Control bubble size

Control bubble size with scale_size(): allows to set minimum and maximum size.

Improve appearance

Make your chart pretty with nice color scale, general theme, stroke around cirle and more..

Interactive version

Here is an interactive bubble chart built in R, thanks to the ggplotly() function of the plotly library. Try to hover circles to get a tooltip, or select an area of interest for zooming. Double click to reinitialize.

Get code

🌐 From the web

The web is full of astonishing R charts made by awesome bloggers. The R graph gallery tries to display some of the best creations and explain how their source code works. If you want to display your work here, please drop me a word or even better, submit a Pull Request!

ggRepel

ggRepel allows to add multiple labels with no overlap automatically. Here is a good looking scatterplot using it!

Scatterplot with regression fit and automatic text repel

A scatterplot with a regression fit to highlight the main trend, a clean color palette, a customized legend and some greatly selected labels with no overlap