# Flourish > Interactive data visualization and scrollytelling — 50+ templates, no code required. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/flourish **Official site:** https://flourish.studio **Category:** data **Also covers:** data ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** Encrypted infrastructure on AWS with Postgres encryption at rest. The Canva ownership is the main concern: free-tier users are opted into AI training by default, and free projects are public and duplicable. Paid tiers and GNI newsroom accounts get private projects and are exempt from AI training. Adequate for most newsroom work on paid/GNI tiers; use caution on the free tier with any data you wouldn't publish. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — independent security review pending - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-02 - **Last agent-verified:** 2026-04-02 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Journalists and newsrooms building interactive charts, animated bar chart races, projection maps, and scrollytelling narratives without writing code. Used by BBC World Service, Sky News, and hundreds of newsrooms via the Google News Initiative partnership. ## Editorial take Flourish is the best no-code tool for interactive, narrative-driven data visualization. Datawrapper is faster for daily charts; Flourish is better for storytelling — scrollytelling, animated sequences, and guided narratives. The Google News Initiative partnership keeps it free for newsrooms, which is a genuine advantage. The Canva acquisition (2022) changed the ownership picture. Canva's default privacy settings opt free-tier users into AI training on uploaded content. That's a real concern for journalists uploading sensitive datasets. Teams/Business/Enterprise accounts are exempt from AI training, but free-tier users must manually opt out in Canva privacy settings. Free-tier projects are public and duplicable by any Flourish user — not acceptable for unpublished investigative data. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Interactive charts, scrollytelling narratives, animated bar chart races, and projection maps. Turning a spreadsheet into a guided visual story without code. **Not for:** Quick daily charts for article embeds (Datawrapper is simpler and faster). Custom or highly bespoke visualizations (use D3.js or Observable). Anything requiring data to stay private on the free tier — all free projects are public and duplicable. ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Free tier (public projects, Flourish branding). Presenter tier bundled with Canva Business/Enterprise. Publisher and Enterprise tiers are custom-quoted — contact sales. No posted per-seat prices. - **Free option:** yes - **Journalist discount:** Free premium accounts for qualifying newsrooms through Google News Initiative. Apply at flourish.studio/newsrooms with a registered Flourish account. Includes private projects, custom templates, and shared folders. ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** yes - **Data jurisdiction:** AWS (global). Flourish hosted on AWS Elastic Beanstalk with encrypted Postgres database. Canva's broader infrastructure spans AWS regions globally — no option to pin data to a specific jurisdiction. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Canva's privacy policy governs Flourish. Free-tier users are opted into AI training on uploaded content by default — you must manually toggle this off in Canva privacy settings. Canva Teams, Business, Enterprise, and Education accounts are exempt from AI training and cannot be opted in. Deleted projects are soft-deleted with a grace period before hard removal; request permanent deletion via hello@flourish.studio. Free-tier visualizations are publicly discoverable and duplicable by other users. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Never upload raw source data to free-tier Flourish — aggregate or anonymize first, since all free projects are public and duplicable. Opt out of AI training immediately in Canva privacy settings (Settings > Privacy > toggle off both 'general usage' and 'content usage' for AI). For sensitive work, use a paid tier or the free GNI newsroom account, which provides private projects. Strip identifying columns before upload. Consider Datawrapper for quick charts with sensitive data — it has a cleaner privacy posture. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Canva (acquired Flourish in 2022). Founded 2016 by Duncan Clark and Robin Houston in London. All 44 employees joined Canva at acquisition. - **Funding model:** Canva revenue. Google News Initiative subsidizes free newsroom tier. - **Business model:** Freemium. Free tier with Flourish branding and public projects. Presenter tier bundled with Canva Business/Enterprise subscriptions. Publisher and Enterprise tiers are custom-quoted with team collaboration, SSO, scrollytelling, live data API, and SLAs. - **Open source:** no - **Built for journalism:** no **Known issues:** Free-tier projects are publicly discoverable and duplicable — any Flourish user can clone your visualization and its underlying data. Canva's default privacy settings opt free users into AI training on uploaded content; must be manually disabled. No WCAG AA certification — Flourish says conventional WCAG guidelines don't map well to interactive visualizations, so accessibility depends on user choices (color palette, alt text, annotations). Deleted data is soft-deleted with a retention period, not immediately purged. Scrollytelling is restricted to Publisher and Enterprise tiers. The flourishcharts open-source packages (Python/R, launched August 2024) are separate from the web editor and don't inherit its privacy model. ## Related programs - flourish-newsrooms --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/flourish Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology