How to Make a Pie Chart in Google Analytics with AI

If you're trying to visualize your Google Analytics data as a pie chart, you may have already discovered it’s not as simple as clicking a button. While GA4 offers powerful reporting features, it de-emphasizes certain classic chart types, leaving many marketers wondering how to show a simple breakdown of traffic sources or device types. This article will walk you through how to create a pie chart in GA4's native tools and introduce a much faster method using AI.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

When Should You Use a Pie Chart?

Before jumping into the "how," it's worth a quick refresher on the "why." Pie charts are excellent for showing a parts-to-whole relationship - in other words, how different segments or categories contribute to a total. They make it easy to see proportions at a glance.

For Google Analytics data, pie charts are ideal for visualizing:

• Traffic Source Mix: What percentage of your sessions come from Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, and Social?
• Device Breakdown: How many of your users are visiting from Mobile, Desktop, or Tablet devices?
• User Demographics: What’s the distribution of your audience by country, gender, or age group?
• New vs. Returning Users: What proportion of your website visitors are first-timers versus repeat visitors?

However, avoid using pie charts when you have too many categories (more than five or six becomes unreadable) or when you want to show trends over time (a line chart is much better for that).

The Challenge with Pie Charts in Google Analytics 4

Unlike its predecessor, Universal Analytics, GA4's standard reports heavily favor bar charts, line graphs, and tables. In the standard "Reports" section, there's no built-in option to switch a visualization to a pie chart. This can be frustrating for anyone who wants a quick, high-level overview of their data composition.

While data visualization experts often argue that bar charts are easier for the human eye to compare values, the reality is that pie charts are a familiar, effective tool for presenting proportional data to colleagues and clients. The good news is that you can still create them in GA4, it just requires a few extra steps.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

Method 1: Building a Pie Chart with GA4 Explorations

The correct, if not a bit hidden, way to create a pie chart within Google Analytics is by using the "Explore" section. Explorations provide a flexible, freeform environment for deep-dive analysis outside of the standard reporting interface. Here's how you do it step-by-step.

Step 1: Navigate to the Explore Section

Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property. On the left-hand navigation menu, click on the Explore icon.

Step 2: Start a New, Blank Exploration

You'll see a gallery of templates. To start from scratch, click on the "Blank" card to open a new, untitled exploration.

Step 3: Define Your Variables (Dimensions and Metrics)

An exploration is built using dimensions (the "what," or the categories you want to compare, like "Country") and metrics (the "how many," or the numbers you're counting, like "Sessions"). You need to import these into your exploration before you can use them.

1. On the far left, in the "Variables" column, find the Dimensions section and click the plus sign (+).
2. Search for the dimension you want to use for your slices of the pie. For example, search for and select "Device category." Click the blue "Import" button in the top right.
3. Next, find the Metrics section in the "Variables" column and click the plus sign (+).
4. Search for the metric you want to measure. "Sessions" or "Total users" are common choices. Select it and click "Import."

You've now told your exploration what data you want to potentially use.

Step 4: Build the Visualization Stub

Now you need to tell the exploration how to structure the report. Look at the middle column, labeled "Tab Settings."

• Drag your dimension (e.g., "Device category") from the "Variables" column and drop it into the Breakdowns box.
• Drag your metric (e.g., "Sessions") from the "Variables" column and drop it into the Values box.

You'll immediately see a data table appear on the right, showing your sessions broken down by device category.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

Step 5: Change the Visualization to a Pie Chart

This is the final step. Just above the data table in the "Tab Settings" column, you’ll see a row of icons under "Visualization." The default is the table icon. Simply click on the pie chart icon to its right.

And there it is! Your data table will instantly transform into a pie chart, showing the exact breakdown you want.

The takeaway: While powerful, the Explorations method involves multiple clicks and a pre-existing understanding of how dimensions and metrics work. It’s effective for in-depth analysis but clunky for a quick look.

Method 2: The Inefficient (But Common) Manual Export

For those intimidated by Explorations, the classic method has always been to export data and build the chart elsewhere. This usually means using Google Sheets or Looker Studio.

Exporting to Google Sheets

You can go to any standard GA4 report (e.g., Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition), click the "Share this report" icon in the top right, and download the data as a CSV. From there, you can upload it to Google Sheets and use its built-in charting tools to create a pie chart.

The major drawback: This data is static. The moment you export it, it's a frozen snapshot in time. To get an update, you have to repeat the entire manual process.

Connecting to Looker Studio

Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a fantastic tool for building dashboards. You can connect your GA4 property as a live data source, then add a pie chart visualization with just a few clicks. This is a great solution for permanent dashboards but overkill if you just need to answer a one-off question quickly.

The Modern Solution: Creating a Pie Chart with a Simple Question

Both native GA4 methods work, but they are either complicated (Explorations) or laborious (manual export). The process of getting a simple insight involves multiple minutes of clicking, dragging, dropping, and configuring. Modern AI analytical tools eliminate this entirely by letting you skip straight from the question to the visualization.

The concept is simple: Instead of navigating a complex interface, you just ask for what you want in plain English.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

From Clicks to Conversation

Manual reporting forces you to act like a translator - you have a business question in your head, and you have to translate it into the specific clicks and settings that a tool like GA4 understands. AIs for analytics are designed to do that translation work for you.

• No Learning Curve: You don't need a tutorial to understand the layout of the Explorations hub. All you need to know is the question you want answered.
• Instantaneous Speed: Creating a report goes from a 5-minute task to a 10-second one. You can ask a follow-up question and get another chart just as fast.
• Smart Interpretation: You don’t even have to be precise with your language. A conversational AI can understand that a prompt like "What percentage of my traffic is from mobile phones this week?" means you want a pie chart showing sessions ("traffic") broken down by device category ("mobile phones") for a specific date range ("this week").

Example: An AI-Powered Workflow

What does this look like in practice? Imagine you could connect your Google Analytics account once and then just… ask.

Your question:

"Create a pie chart showing sessions by country for the last 30 days."

The AI connects to your live Google Analytics data, pulls the correct dimension ("country") and metric ("sessions"), applies the date range, and instantly generates a clean, interactive pie chart. No menus, no dragging, no configuring. Just a question and an answer.

Final Thoughts

Creating a pie chart in Google Analytics 4 is absolutely possible, but it requires diving into the less-intuitive Explorations hub. While a useful skill for deep analysis, it isn't ideal for the quick, everyday questions that drive business decisions. The alternative of exporting data to spreadsheets often results in stale reports that are immediately outdated.

For a truly efficient workflow, we built Graphed to be your personal AI data analyst. We connect directly to your Google Analytics account (and other marketing and sales tools), allowing you to ask for charts, dashboards, and insights using simple, natural language. Instead of spending your time building reports, you can get instant answers and focus on turning those insights into action.