How to use the River

The Datawrapper River is a place to exchange charts and maps with other Datawrapper users. After adding a chart to the River, anyone can use it and customize the chart in Datawrapper before publishing it on their website in their own style. 

You can find it at river.datawrapper.de

Usage of the River features is free. You can add as many charts to the River and re-use as many charts as you like.

How do I add my charts to the River?

Your charts are not added to the River automatically. If you want to add a chart to the River, do the following: In Step 4: Publish & Embed, publish the chart as you're used to. Then click on "Add your chart to our new River":

This will bring you to a page where you can add notes that will be shown to potential users of your chart, include your byline attribution and an extra link, and enter some keywords. You can also click directly on the “Add my chart to the River” Button at the bottom of the site:

Chart views are attributed to the person who reuses a chart from the River. Meaning, adding a chart to the River won't increase the chart views counted for your account.

How do I use a River chart for my publication? 

All reusable charts are collected on river.datawrapper.de. Here, you can browse through the newest charts or search for a specific topic. You'll also find favorite charts of the Datawrapper team under the section Our River favorites. 

All charts made available for ''River'' by Datawrapper users can be found under Most recent visualizations. This section shows the most recent visualizations at the top.

Clicking on  Reuse will bring you to step 3 of the chart creation process of a copy of the visualization. The visualization is yours now. It will appear in your chart folder, and you can change its chart type, headline, colors etc. However, you won’t be able to change the data or the attribution to the source. 

Once you’re done, you can publish and embed the chart in your custom chart layout, as you’re used to. It’s a free and fast process.

Learn more about how the River works in the FAQs. Curious what was the motivation behind it? Read our announcement blog post.