How to Add a Top Languages Card to Your GitHub Profile README

The top languages card analyzes your public repositories and counts bytes of code by language. It then displays the top languages as a percentage breakdown in your chosen layout format. The card is powered by the same anuraghazra/github-readme-stats service as the stats card — no additional setup required.

Important caveat: the card measures bytes of code, not time spent or proficiency. A forked repository with 50,000 lines of Java will skew your chart toward Java even if you only made one small change. For an accurate representation, you will want to exclude certain repositories and hide certain languages — both covered below.

Add this to your README, replacing YOUR_USERNAME:

![Top Languages](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=YOUR_USERNAME&layout=compact&theme=tokyonight)

Available layouts (set with &layout=):

• default — vertical bar chart, one row per language
• compact — smaller card, fits better beside the stats card
• donut — pie/donut chart visualization
• donut-vertical — vertical donut variant
• pie — standard pie chart

For a two-column layout with the stats card:

<div align="center">
  <img src="https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api?username=YOUR_USERNAME&theme=tokyonight&count_private=true" height="150" />
  <img src="https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=YOUR_USERNAME&layout=compact&theme=tokyonight" height="150" />
</div>

To hide specific languages that don't represent your skills, use the hide parameter:

![Top Languages](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=YOUR_USERNAME&hide=html,css,jupyter+notebook&layout=compact)

To exclude specific repositories that skew your results:

![Top Languages](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=YOUR_USERNAME&exclude_repo=repo1,repo2,repo3&layout=compact)

To limit to a specific number of languages:

![Top Languages](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=YOUR_USERNAME&langs_count=6&layout=compact)

The default is 5 languages. Common hides for backend developers include html and css. Common excludes include forked repositories, archived projects, or repositories from learning courses.

If the card shows languages you don't use (like Jupyter Notebook for data science tools or Makefile for build scripts), add them to the hide parameter. If a large forked repository dominates your chart, add it to exclude_repo.

If the card shows 'No language data found', your public repositories may have no detectable language content, or all repositories may have the language detection disabled. Add the ? query parameter structure correctly — the top-langs endpoint uses /api/top-langs/ (with trailing slash) not /api/top-langs.

For the compact layout to align correctly with the stats card in a two-column div, set matching height attributes on both img tags. Values between 150 and 200 typically work well for most screen sizes.