How to Set the X and Y Ticks on a Plot in Matplotlib with Python

In this article, we show how to set the x and y ticks on a plot in matplotlib with Python.

So we can set the range of what x values appear on the x-axis in matplotlib with the set_xlim() function.

We can set the range of what y values will appear on the y-axis in matplotlib with the set_ylim() function.

But how do we set where the ticks appear that mark values on the x and y axes?

We can do this in the matplotlib software in Python using the set_xticks() function to set where the ticks appear along the x-axis and we can use the set_yticks() function to set where the ticks appear along the y-axis.

So say we have an x-axis where the range is from 0 to 10.

And say we have a y-axis where the range is from 0 to 20.

We are going to write code so that the x-axis has a tick every 2 numbers (2,4, 6, 8, and 10) and the y-axis has a tick every n numbers (from 0 to 20).

Below is the code that does this.


import matplotlib.pyplot as plt axes= plt.axes() axes.set_xlim([0,10]) axes.set_ylim([0,20]) axes.set_xticks([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]) axes.set_yticks([2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20]) plt.show()

So let's break down this code.

We first import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. This allows us to reference the plot as plt.

We creates an axes for the plot with the line, axes= plt.axes()

we then set the x-axis range using the axes.set_xlim() function. We specify 0 to 10 for the x-axis. On this x-axis, we want a tick to appear from 1 to 10. Therefore, we specify the line, axes.set_xticks([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]). This creates a tick at 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

We then set the y-axis range using the axes.set_ylim() function. We specify 0 to 20 for the y-axis. On the y-ais, we want a tick to appear at each even number from 0 to 20, so this is 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20. This creates a tick at 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20.

We have now created custom ticks for the x-axis and the y-axis.

Running the following code above, we get the following output shown below.

So you can see that we have our custom ticks showing on the x- and y-axes.

With the range we specified for the x-axis, 0 to 10, by default (with me at least), the x-axis had ticks at every even number (2,4,6,8,10). However, with our custom tick specficiation, a tick appears at 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.

With the range we specified for the y-axis, 0 to 20, by default (again with me), the y-axis had ticks at every 2.5 numbers (2.5,5,7.5,10,12.5,15,17.5,20). With our custom tick specification, the y-axis has ticks at every 2 numbers (2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20).

Ant this is how to set x and y ticks on a plot in matplotlib with Python.

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