Bar Chart vs Histogram: The Difference and When to Use Each

By Dr. Ahmed Mortuza Saleque · Updated November 11, 2026 · How we check our content

The short answer

A bar chart compares separate categories, so its bars have gaps and can be in any order. A histogram shows the distribution of one numeric variable: the x-axis is a number line cut into ranges called bins, the bars touch, and their order is fixed. Use a bar chart for counts per category, such as sales by region, and a histogram for data such as heights or test scores.

Open the Data Plotter →

Side-by-side bar chart of sales by region with gaps between bars and a histogram of test scores with touching bars over score ranges — Tap the image to enlarge it. Free to share with a link to this page.

Key differences

	Bar chart	Histogram
Data type	Categories	One numeric variable
x-axis	Category names	Number line split into bins
Gaps between bars	Yes	No, bars touch
Can reorder bars	Yes, e.g. by size	No, order is numeric
Bar height means	A value or count per category	How many values fall in each bin
Shows	Comparison	Shape, centre and spread

Worked example: 30 test scores

Thirty students' scores grouped into bins 10 points wide.

Score range	Students
50–59	3
60–69	7
70–79	11
80–89	6
90–99	3

Drawn as a histogram, the five bars touch and rise to a peak at 70–79, then fall away almost evenly: the scores are roughly symmetric around the mid-70s. Swapping the bars would make no sense, because the x-axis is a number line.

A bar chart of the same class would answer a different question, such as the average score of each of three teaching groups. Those groups have no numeric order, so the bars have gaps and can be sorted from highest to lowest.

Choosing the bin width

Start with about √n bins: √30 ≈ 5.5, so 5 or 6 bins for 30 values.
Sturges' rule gives 1 + log₂(n) bins, about 6 for 30 values; it works for roughly bell-shaped data.
Use round edges (50, 60, 70) so readers can interpret the bins.
Try two or three widths. Too few bins hide the shape; too many make it noisy.

Make either chart from your data

Paste your data into the Data Plotter: choose Bar for a category column with values, or Histogram for a single numeric column. It also lists the mean, median, quartiles and skewness, so you can describe the shape in numbers. For a quick summary by hand, use the 5-number summary calculator or the descriptive statistics calculator.

Common questions

Why do histogram bars touch?

Because the bins are adjacent ranges on a continuous number line; there is no gap between 59.9 and 60.

Is a column chart the same as a histogram?

No. A column chart is a vertical bar chart of categories. It only looks like a histogram.

Can a histogram have categories on the x-axis?

No. If the x-axis shows categories, it is a bar chart.

When should I use a box plot instead of a histogram?

When comparing several groups at once, or when you want the median, quartiles and outliers to stand out.