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Heap Sort Visualizer — Animated, Step-by-Step

Animated heap sort with step controls, speed, custom input, live comparison/swap counters and pseudocode. Runs in your browser.

Free No signup Client-side Privacy friendly Updated
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Comparisons: Swaps / writes: Array accesses:

Code examples

Ready-to-copy reference implementations. Free to use in your own projects and assignments.

How to use

  1. 1 Press Play to watch the array build a max-heap, then repeatedly extract the max.
  2. 2 Use Step to advance one sift-down comparison at a time.
  3. 3 Type your own numbers into Custom input and press Apply.
  4. 4 Follow the highlighted pseudocode and the live comparison / swap counters.

Why use this tool

  • See how the array is treated as a binary heap (parent at i, children at 2i+1 / 2i+2).
  • Watch sift-down restore the heap property after each max is moved to the end.
  • Understand why heap sort guarantees O(n log n) with O(1) extra space.
  • Runs entirely in your browser. No signup, no uploads.

Frequently asked questions

What is heap sort?

Heap sort builds a max-heap from the array, then repeatedly swaps the root (largest) to the end and sifts down to restore the heap, growing a sorted region from the right.

What is the time complexity of heap sort?

O(n log n) in the best, average, and worst case. Building the heap is O(n) and each of the n extractions costs O(log n).

Is heap sort stable?

No. Heap operations swap elements far apart, which can reorder equal values.

How does heap sort compare to quicksort?

Heap sort has a guaranteed O(n log n) worst case and uses O(1) extra space, but quicksort is usually faster in practice due to better cache locality and a smaller constant factor.

What is Heap Sort Visualizer?

A Heap Sort Visualizer animates heap sort: building a max-heap from the array, then repeatedly swapping the root to the end and sifting down to restore the heap. It demonstrates the guaranteed O(n log n) time with O(1) extra space.

Features

Step-by-step animation

Watch the max-heap build and each extract-and-sift-down step.

Complexity

Time: O(n log n) in all cases. Space: O(1). In-place; not stable.

100% private

Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Example

Input

[4, 10, 3, 5, 1]

Output

build max-heap [10,5,3,4,1]; extract max repeatedly → [1, 3, 4, 5, 10] (sorted)

Common use cases

  1. 1

    Worst-case O(n log n) in-place

    See a sort that guarantees O(n log n) without O(n) extra space.

  2. 2

    Learn the heap structure

    Understand max-heaps and sift-down through the sort.

  3. 3

    Priority-queue link

    Connect heap sort to the binary-heap priority queue.

Summary

Zerethon's heap sort visualizer animates the algorithm in your browser, first building a max-heap and then repeatedly extracting the maximum to the end of the array. Heap sort runs in O(n log n) time in the best, average, and worst case, using O(1) extra space; it is in-place but not stable. It combines merge sort's worst-case guarantee with constant extra space.

Category
Algorithm
Pricing
Free
Privacy
Browser-based
Signup
Not required

References

Privacy

Your data never leaves your browser unless explicitly stated. Heap Sort Visualizer runs entirely client-side — no server upload, no logging, no tracking of your input.

New to this? Read the step-by-step explanation with Big-O analysis: Learn Sorting Algorithms →

Compare

Quicksort vs Merge sort

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