Spread · Distribution

The whole distribution behind the average

An average hides how the values are spread. Two teams can have the same average delivery time while one is steady and the other swings wildly. Power BI has no built-in box plot, so people fall back on bar charts of averages, or build workarounds with error bars and reference lines.

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Free to use, with no watermark and no time limit. Pro from $3 per viewer a year.

Delivery times vary most in the NorthDays from order to delivery, by region
NorthSouthWest0510 days
Light report
Delivery times vary most in the NorthDays from order to delivery, by region
NorthSouthWest0510 days
Dark report

What it shows

Spread draws one row per category (region, product, team) and shows how the values in that category are spread out.

  • The box covers the middle half of the values. A wide box means the values vary a lot.
  • The line inside the box is the median, the value in the middle.
  • The whiskers reach out to the lowest and highest normal values.
  • The dots beyond the whiskers are outliers: orders, days or people that stand out and are worth a closer look.

How to set it up

Add Spread from AppSource or the .pbiviz file, then drag in:

Category
What to compare, such as Region. Optional: leave it out to see one distribution for everything.
Detail
The field that makes one value per row, such as Order ID or Date.
Value
The number to analyse, such as order value or delivery days.
Compare byPro
Splits each category into one box per value, such as this year and last year, each in its own colour with a legend above the chart.

Read the full Spread guide

In the report

  • Hover a row for the full numbers: count, minimum, quartiles, median, mean, maximum and number of outliers.
  • Click a row to filter the rest of the report, and Ctrl+click to pick several.
  • When you select something in another visual, Spread fades the full distribution and draws the selected part on top.
  • It uses the report’s number formats, theme colours and light or dark background, and it works in high-contrast mode.
  • You can use it from the keyboard, and screen readers get a full description of each row.
  • English and Norwegian, following the language Power BI is set to.

Free and Pro

FeatureFreePro
Box plot with median, quartiles, whiskers and outliers (1.5 × IQR)✓✓
Mean marker, median labels, sorting by median or name✓✓
Highlight the widest spread, the highest or lowest median, or a category you name✓✓
Tooltips, cross-filtering, cross-highlighting, keyboard, high contrast, light and dark✓✓
Violin: the shape of the distribution, so you see where values bunch up and whether there are two peaks—✓
Box and beeswarm: every single value as a dot over the box (up to 2,000 per row)—✓
More outlier rules: only extreme outliers (3 × IQR), outside the 5th–95th percentile, or none—✓
Ridgeline: one curve per category, overlapping like a mountain range, so you can compare the shape of many categories in little space—✓
Grouped boxes: add a Compare by field to see, say, each region this year against last year, as boxes, violins, beeswarms or overlaid ridges—✓

Free features always work, with no key and no tag. Pro features need a licence key for Spread or Everything. Without a valid key, a Pro option shows the free box plot instead, with Compare by left out, with a short notice and a “Try Pro free” button. A paid key keeps Pro working for 7 days after it runs out, so a late renewal never breaks a report.

Your data stays in your report

Spread makes no network calls and stores nothing outside the report. The licence key is checked inside the visual, so it also works offline, in Report Server and in locked-down tenants.

How the visuals handle data

Pro licence
$36per creator a year
$3per viewer a year

For Spread alone. The entire suite is $90 per creator and $7.50 per viewer, or license the whole organisation.

See pricing

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