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Animations in Plotly

Why animations

Animations are useful when you want to show change over time:

GDP vs life expectancy by year
Covid cases by month

Animated scatter (classic example)

Animated scatter

import plotly.express as px
 
df = px.data.gapminder()
 
fig = px.scatter(
    df,
    x="gdpPercap",
    y="lifeExp",
    size="pop",
    color="continent",
    hover_name="country",
    log_x=True,
    size_max=60,
    animation_frame="year",
    animation_group="country",
    title="Gapminder: GDP vs Life Expectancy (animated)",
)
 
fig.show()

Animated scatter

import plotly.express as px
 
df = px.data.gapminder()
 
fig = px.scatter(
    df,
    x="gdpPercap",
    y="lifeExp",
    size="pop",
    color="continent",
    hover_name="country",
    log_x=True,
    size_max=60,
    animation_frame="year",
    animation_group="country",
    title="Gapminder: GDP vs Life Expectancy (animated)",
)
 
fig.show()

Tips

Animations work best with fewer points (or aggregation).
Add animation_groupanimation_group so Plotly tracks each entity across frames.
Consider facets if animation is too visually busy.

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