15 Free Chart Templates for Google Sheets (Copy & Use)
15 free, copy-to-your-Drive Google Sheets chart templates — line, waterfall, gauge, funnel, KPI and more — each with an honest note on when to use it.
15 Free Chart Templates for Google Sheets (Copy & Use)
Most “free Google Sheets chart template” pages are a bait-and-switch. You click through expecting a spreadsheet and land on a pitch for a $10-a-month add-on that promises charts Sheets supposedly can’t make on its own. It can. Google Sheets ships with over two dozen native chart types, and the fifteen below cover almost everything a normal business report needs — no add-on, no trial, no card.
Each template is a Google Sheet you copy straight to your own Drive: open it, hit File > Make a copy, and it’s yours to edit. Every one includes clean sample data, the finished chart wired to that data, and a note on what the chart is actually good for — because half the value of a template is knowing when not to use it.
How the copy-to-Drive templates work
There’s no download and no file to manage. Click a template link, choose Make a copy from the File menu, and Google drops an editable duplicate into your Drive. Replace the sample data with yours and the chart follows. If a link opens in view-only mode, that’s expected — you’re not meant to edit the master; you copy it first.
All fifteen are built on native Google Sheets chart types (Insert > Chart, then pick the type). That matters because native charts survive being shared, they render on mobile, and they don’t stop working when someone forgets to install an add-on.
The 15 templates
1. Line / trend chart
The workhorse. Any metric tracked over time — revenue by month, sign-ups by week, temperature by day. Use it when your horizontal axis is time and you care about the shape of the trend, not exact values. If you’re building one from scratch, the line graph walkthrough covers multi-series, smoothing and trendlines in detail.
2. Clustered column comparison
Bars grouped side by side to compare a few categories across a few periods — Q1 vs Q2 across three regions, say. Works well up to about four series. Past that the clusters get busy and a line chart usually reads better.
3. Stacked-to-100% composition
Each column totals 100%, so you’re showing proportion, not absolute size — market share by quarter, budget split by department. Use it when the mix matters more than the totals. Don’t use it if the reader needs actual numbers; stacked segments are hard to measure by eye.
4. Waterfall chart (native)
Google added waterfall as a native type years ago, so ignore any tutorial telling you to fake one with stacked bars. Perfect for bridging one number to another — starting revenue, plus and minus the drivers, ending revenue. The template’s sample data is a profit bridge you can swap out directly. Full build steps live in the waterfall chart guide.
5. Combo chart (column + line)
Two chart types on one plot — columns for volume, a line for a rate or average on a second axis. The classic is “units sold” as bars with “conversion rate” as a line. Powerful, and easy to overdo; keep it to two series or it turns into a mess.
6. Gauge KPI
A single dial showing one number against a range — 73% of target, sitting in the amber band. Genuinely useful for one hero metric on a dashboard. Genuinely wasteful if you stack six of them; at that point a simple table tells the story in a tenth of the space.
7. Scorecard KPI
Sheets’ scorecard chart shows one big value plus its change against a baseline — “$1.2M revenue, ▲ 8% vs last month.” It’s the cleanest way to headline a KPI, and it takes ten seconds to set up. This is the template people reach for most once they discover it exists.
8. Funnel chart
Stages that shrink — leads to qualified to demo to closed. Sheets doesn’t have a dedicated funnel type, so this template builds one from a bar chart arranged to taper. It does the job for a sales or signup funnel without any add-on gymnastics.
9. Timeline chart (native)
Google’s annotated timeline plots events along a date axis and lets readers hover for notes. Good for project milestones or a launch schedule. Keep it to milestones — if you find yourself wanting task bars and dependencies, you want a Gantt chart, which is a different tool on a different site.
10. Pie / donut (part-to-whole)
Yes, it’s included, and yes, you should use it sparingly. A pie works for two or three slices where one clearly dominates. Beyond four or five slices, nobody can compare the wedges and a bar chart wins. The template is here because sometimes a pie is genuinely the right call — just not as often as people reach for it.
11. Area chart
A line chart with the space beneath it filled — emphasises volume or cumulative total over time. Use it for a single series or a small stack where the running total is the point. Stack too many areas and the ones on top become impossible to read.
12. Scatter (correlation)
Two numeric variables plotted against each other to reveal a relationship — ad spend vs conversions, price vs units. This is the chart for “does X move with Y,” and it’s underused in business reporting where everyone defaults to bars.
13. Radar chart
A spider web comparing one or more items across several dimensions — a product scored on price, speed, quality, support. Striking for profile comparisons, but it distorts easily and only works when every axis shares a comparable scale. A niche pick, included because when it fits, nothing else does the job.
14. Treemap (hierarchy)
Nested rectangles sized by value — sales by category then subcategory, storage by folder. Good for showing how a whole breaks into parts and sub-parts at once. Reads well at a glance; reads badly if you need precise values.
15. Heatmap (conditional-formatting grid)
Not a “chart” in the Insert menu — you build it with conditional formatting colour scales on a grid of cells. Ideal for a calendar of activity, a cohort table, or any matrix where colour intensity tells the story faster than numbers. The template’s sample is a weekly activity grid you can overwrite.
What “free” actually gets you here
Everything above is native Google Sheets, which means free means free — no seven-day trial that quietly starts billing, no watermark, no export lock. The honest limit is at the edges: if you need a Sankey diagram, a Marimekko, a proper bullet chart, or heavy custom styling, native Sheets runs out of road and that’s where paid add-ons earn their keep. For ordinary reporting — the fifteen types above — you never hit that wall.
If you’d rather have the charts built for you from a plain-English description, that’s a different route worth knowing about. We put Google’s built-in AI through its paces in Gemini in Google Sheets: AI chart generation tested — useful, uneven, and honestly assessed.
Copy them all
Each link opens a view-only sheet; use File > Make a copy to get your own editable version. Start with the scorecard and the line chart if you’re building a dashboard — those two carry most reports on their own.
FAQ
Do I need to download anything? No. These are Google Sheets, not files. You copy them to your own Drive with File > Make a copy and edit them online. Nothing installs.
Why are the links view-only? So you always start from a clean master. You copy the sheet first, then edit your copy. If you could edit the original, the next person would inherit your data.
Are these really free, or is there a catch? Genuinely free. Every template uses native Google Sheets chart types, so there’s no add-on, subscription or trial involved. The only thing native charts can’t do is a handful of exotic chart types — for those, a paid add-on is a fair trade, but you won’t need one for standard reporting.
Will the charts work if I share the sheet? Yes. Native charts travel with the sheet and render for anyone you share it with, including on mobile. That’s the main reason to prefer them over add-on charts, which can break for viewers who don’t have the add-on.
Can I use these on a dashboard? Absolutely — combine several on one tab. The scorecard, gauge and combo templates are built with dashboards in mind. Just keep gauges to one or two; a grid of dials looks impressive and communicates less than a plain table.
What if I need a chart type that isn’t here? Check Insert > Chart first — Sheets has more native types than most people realise, including candlestick, geo and org charts. If it’s genuinely not there (Sankey, Marimekko), that’s the one legitimate reason to look at a paid add-on.