Barrace

A bar race chart animates ranked bars across time. Use it to show how top categories change between time frames.

A bar race chart animates ranked bars across time frames. Use it to show how top categories change over time.

Bar race chart

Configure a bar race chart

Use the Plot panel to choose axes, grouping, and display settings.

Bar race chart options

Use these options to control how the bar race chart renders.

Option	What it controls	Typical values / notes
Value column	Numeric metric that determines bar length.	Examples: value, memory_kb, cpu_usage, bytes_sent. This column must be numeric.
Label column	What each bar represents (entity name).	Common choices: pod, host, process, disk. This column is used to name each bar and track entities across frames.
Unit	Suffix appended to the displayed value.	Examples: kB, MB, ms, %, ops.
Apply	Applies changes to the widget.	Changes do not render until you click Apply.

When to use a bar race chart

Use a bar race chart when you want to:

• Show how rankings change over time (top N moving up/down)

• Highlight “winners” and “losers” across time frames

• Tell a story about change, not just a final snapshot

Typical use cases:

• Top services by request volume over time

• Top namespaces by log ingest over time

• Top hosts by CPU usage over time

• Top teams by cost over time

When not to use a bar race chart

Avoid a bar race chart when:

• You need precise value comparisons (use Bar/Table)

• You have too many categories (animation becomes noisy)

• You want a continuous time series trend (use Line/Area)

• You need record-level inspection (use Table/List/Details)