How to Show Legends and Percentages on Matplotlib Pie Charts

Introduction

Hello, I am PiPi. Recently a member of the Python community asked a Matplotlib visualization question, which we will explore together.

Problem Description

The user wants to know how to:

Display a legend indicating what each color represents below a pie chart.

Show percentage values outside the pie chart.

These requirements were not easily found in existing documentation.

Solution

Community members Kelly and Yu Liang provided guidance. The following screenshots illustrate the steps to configure the pie chart using Matplotlib:

The key parameters involve setting labels, autopct, and legend options in the plt.pie() call. By adjusting these arguments, the legend appears below the chart and percentages are displayed outside.

Additional parameter references for Matplotlib were shared to help users fine‑tune the appearance.

Conclusion

This article presented a specific Matplotlib visualization problem, provided a step‑by‑step solution with code snippets and screenshots, and helped the community resolve the issue efficiently.