Build tag cloud charts with Kibana

Tag cloud charts display text labels (tags) where each tag's size represents its frequency or importance. They are ideal for visualizing word frequency, showing popular categories, and providing an at-a-glance summary of text-based data. They work best when the relative prominence of terms matters more than exact values, and are most effective with up to about 50 items.

You can create tag cloud charts in Kibana using Lens.

Example Lens tag cloud chart showing popular search terms

Before you start, make sure you have data indexed into Elasticsearch or install sample data. By default, Lens uses data views to access your Elasticsearch data. Data views are created automatically in most cases when you ingest data. You can also create one manually to select just the data that you want. Alternatively, you can use the ES|QL query mode to query your Elasticsearch data directly.

To build a tag cloud chart:

Access Lens

Lens is Kibana's main visualization editor. You can access it:
- From a dashboard: On the Dashboards page, open or create the dashboard where you want to add a tag cloud chart, then add a new visualization.
- From the Visualize library page by creating a new visualization.
Set the visualization to Tag cloud

New visualizations often start as Bar charts.

Using the Visualization type dropdown, select Tag cloud.
Define the data to show
1. Select the data view that contains your data.
2. Configure the Tags dimension to define which field provides the text labels.
3. Configure the Metric dimension to define the value that determines each tag's size.
The chart preview updates to show text labels sized by metric value, with more prominent tags representing higher values.
Customize the chart to follow best practices

Tweak the appearance of the chart to your needs. Consider the following best practices:

Limit the number of tags

Keep your tag cloud to 20-50 tags maximum. Too many tags create visual clutter and make the most important terms hard to identify. If the panel is too small to fit all tags, a warning indicates that some values could not be displayed.

Use meaningful metrics

Choose a metric that represents importance or frequency. Count is common, but Sum, Average, or custom formulas can provide different insights.

Consider orientation

Multiple orientations (horizontal and angled) create visual interest but can make reading harder. Use single orientation for clarity.

Choose appropriate colors

Use colors to add meaning (categories) or keep them neutral to focus attention on size differences.

Refer to Tag cloud chart settings to find all configuration options for your tag cloud chart.
Save the chart
- If you accessed Lens from a dashboard, select Save and return to save the visualization and add it to that dashboard, or select Save to library to add the visualization to the Visualize library and reuse it later.
- If you accessed Lens from the Visualize library, select Save. A menu opens and lets you add the visualization to a dashboard and to the Visualize library.

Customize your tag cloud chart to display exactly the information you need, formatted the way you want.

Tags settings

The Tags dimension defines the text labels that appear in the cloud.

Data

The Tags dimension supports the following functions:

Top values: Display the most common values in a field.
- Field: Select the field to group by. You can add up to 4 fields to create multi-term tags. When multiple fields are selected, each tag represents a unique combination of values across those fields. You can reorder the fields by dragging them to change their priority.
- Number of values: How many tags to display (recommended: 20-50).
- Rank by: Specifies the dimension the top values are ranked by. Available options:
  - Count of records: Rank by the number of documents containing each value. This is the default when a metric is defined.
  - Alphabetical: Rank by the term key alphabetically. This is the default when no metric is defined.
  - Rarity: Find terms that appear in very few documents, using a rare terms aggregation. You can configure the Max doc count to set the maximum number of documents a term can appear in to be considered rare (default: 1, max: 100). Only available for non-numeric fields and single-field terms.
  - Significance: Find statistically unusual terms compared to the overall data set, using a significant terms aggregation. Only available for keyword fields and single-field terms.
  - Custom: Define a custom metric aggregation to rank by (for example, rank by the sum of a numeric field rather than by count).
- Rank direction: Ascending or descending order. Disabled when Rank by is set to Rarity or Significance.
Advanced settings
Several advanced options allow you to refine the behavior of the breakdown:
- Include documents without the selected field: Off by default.
- Group remaining values as "Other": On by default.
- Enable accuracy mode: This option improves results for high-cardinality data, but increases the load on the Elasticsearch cluster.
- Include values: Values from the breakdown dimension to always show a tile for.
- Exclude values: Values from the breakdown dimension to always exclude from the displayed tiles.
Date histogram: Group data into time-based buckets.
- Field: Select the date field to use for the time-based grouping.
- Include empty rows: This option is on by default. Turn it off to exclude empty rows from the data.
- Bind to global time picker: Associate the selected field to the Lens or dashboard main time selector.
- Minimum interval: Define the time interval for aggregating the data. For example, 30s, 20m, 24h, 2d, 1w, 1M
- Drop partial intervals: Exclude incomplete intervals from the data. This option is off by default.
Intervals: Create numeric ranges for continuous data.
- Field: Select the numeric field to create intervals from.
- Include empty rows: Include intervals with no matching documents.
Filters: Define custom KQL filters to create specific tags.

Appearance

Name: Customize the label shown in the visualization title.
Value format: Control how tag labels are displayed (number, percent, bytes, and more).
Color mapping: Select a color palette or assign specific colors to tags. Refer to Assign colors to terms for details.

Metric settings

The Metric dimension defines the value that determines each tag's size.

Data

The value that determines tag size. When you drag a field onto the chart, Kibana suggests a function based on the field type. You can use aggregation functions like Sum, Average, Count, Median, and more, or create custom calculations with formulas.

Appearance