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About this tool
Watch sorting algorithms in action with animated bar chart visualizations. Compare Bubble Sort, Quick Sort, Merge Sort, Insertion Sort, Selection Sort, and Heap Sort.
Sorting Algorithm Animation replays Bubble Sort, Selection Sort and Insertion Sort as a bar chart, recording every comparison and swap as a discrete step you can play, pause or walk through one at a time. It is built for students meeting O(n²) sorting for the first time, and for anyone teaching why insertion sort finishes early on nearly-ordered data while bubble sort keeps scanning. Bars being compared turn amber and the settled tail turns green, so the shape of each algorithm's progress is visible rather than described.
Open Sorting Algorithm Animation on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Paste your code or data sample into the workspace.
Pick the format, conversion, or analysis you need.
Copy the polished result straight back into your project.
The full sequence is generated up front, so you can scrub backwards and forwards or jump to the start, not just watch an animation run once.
Amber shows the pair currently being compared and green shows the region already in final position, which is the part students usually miss.
Switching algorithm re-sorts the array you are already looking at, so the comparison is like for like instead of against fresh random data.
Three: Bubble Sort, Selection Sort and Insertion Sort. All three are comparison sorts with O(n²) worst-case time complexity and sort in place, which is what makes them worth watching side by side.
Between 5 and 50, set with the array size slider. Values are random integers from 5 to 104, and changing the size generates a fresh array immediately.
Yes. The speed slider runs from 1% to 100%, which maps to a delay of roughly 198 ms per step at the slowest setting down to about 50 ms at the fastest. You can also pause and use the step-forward and step-back buttons to move exactly one comparison at a time.
On random data all three do on the order of n²/2 comparisons, but insertion sort is usually fastest in practice and drops to O(n) on already-sorted input, while selection sort always performs the same number of comparisons regardless of order. None of them is competitive with O(n log n) sorts like merge sort or quicksort on large inputs.