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A software application has many moving parts, and data is at the heart of it all. But how do you make rows and rows of raw data understandable for your users? That’s where data visualization comes in.
JavaScript chart libraries are one of the most common ways to add data visualizations to an app. But with so many libraries to choose from, each with their own pros and cons, you can easily get overwhelmed. Instead of spending hours on research, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you.
In this article, we’ll compare the JavaScript visualization libraries, what you can use them for, and other alternatives for the job.
A Javascript chart library is a toolkit for developers to visualize data as charts. It comes with pre-built components for different chart types, which you can integrate into your broader codebase.
Back in the day, a programmer had to collect data from different types of databases, and manually code charts and dashboards to visualize that valuable data. Today, you can use a chart library as a reusable blueprint for your charts and dashboards.
The most common use case for chart libraries is creating visualizations within an app. For example, a dashboard in a social media scheduling tool showing post engagement across different channels.
For most developers, data visualization isn’t the main focus of their app. But let’s face it—visuals matter. With JavaScript charting libraries, you can create custom charts and graphs without starting from zero. Start from existing code and make the customizations you need.
Especially with open-source libraries, there are plenty of communities online (such as GitHub) where you can find support. If you get stuck solving a specific problem, there’s probably someone else that had it before. You can look up a solution quickly or go through tutorials and demos to find out how to do something.
With a little bit of research, you’ll easily find hundreds of chart libraries to use. You just need to find the one that suit your needs in terms of ease of use and visualizations. As you’ll learn later in this article, not all chart libraries have all the visualization types, so it’s worth shopping around to find the best one for your development team’s needs.
The short answer is: there’s no single way to create a chart in JavaScript. Every chart library uses different properties, and some will support different chart types than others. But in general, you’ll start with a code template and then customize charts to your liking. For example, chart libraries may let you:
However, do your due diligence before you start building charts with just any library. Make sure to write out all your requirements and choose a library that matches your needs. You don’t want to waste time building 90% of your visualizations, only to find out that your library of choice doesn’t support stock charts (or any other visualization you need).
If you’re just getting started with data visualization, here are the 11 most popular JavaScript visualization libraries to consider.
The most commonly used chart library is popular for a good reason. D3.js is one of the most powerful and flexible libraries out there - and it’s free! You can create really complex custom charts and it works with various formats such as CSS, SVG, and HTML. With dynamic DOM manipulation, you can build super interactive data products that change as your data changes.
On the flip side, it can be really daunting for developers with no experience in data viz. Expect a steep learning curve.
If you need full control over data visualization and interactivity, and you don’t mind a challenge, D3.js is for you.
Chart.js is open-source and completely free to use. With eight different types of data visualizations, it’s not the most comprehensive library, but it sure is easy to use! It has detailed developer docs to help you with chart creation, whether it’s pie charts, line charts, radar charts, or others.
If you’re looking for high performance analytics, Chart.js is a great contender. It renders chart elements on an HTML5 canvas, which is much faster than rendering as SVG, like most D3-based libraries do. And with many available plugins, you can get even more out of Chart.js.
If you need a quick and easy solution for a small visualization project, Chart.js is perfect!
Recharts is a composable chart library built on top of React components. To build charts, you can use SVG elements on top of a D3 submodule. It allows plenty of opportunities for modification, which is one of the reasons it’s used globally by companies such as Ahrefs.
While it can be a bit slow when working with large datasets, it more than makes up for it with its customization capabilities and ease of use. Its extensive TypeScript support is why Recharts is a popular choice among React developers.
Recharts is perfect for quick charting solutions in react projects, but definitely check out this piece on React chart libraries if you need more React-specific options.
Highcharts lets you create charts in SVG and then convert them to VML. While their motto is “simply visualize”, the dashboards don’t look as impressive compared to some other contenders. However, the backward compatibility with older Internet Explorer versions as well as the wide variety of demos make it an interesting choice.
If you want a middle ground between D3.js and Chart.js, Highcharts is great. It’s feature-rich, yet not insanely complex to use. They also have a very rich documentation library that can help you get started rapidly.
Highcharts isn’t free like some of the other tools here, but if you’re in need of polished visualizations for enterprise apps, it could be worth the cost.
Looking for something that is open-source, easy to use, has beautiful visualizations and allows annotations? Apexcharts has you covered. According to their documentation, this JS library supports all charting features, including annotations, which are not so common among its competitors.
Besides charts, Apexcharts has a separate product called Reveal, which allows you to do embedded analytics and add charts into your website or product. Apexcharts supports Angular, Vue, React and other frameworks.
There is a total of 90 charts that you can use in Fusioncharts, making it the most comprehensive option out there. Besides charts, you can also create dashboards and both look stunning, with interactive animations for the end user.
It supports jQuery, Angular, Django, React, PHP, Net, Ruby and many other types of frameworks.
Fusioncharts work and look great across different devices. All of this comes at a minimum price of $439/year which may be worth it if you need a great variety of visualizations across devices.
If you’re a fan of the Google ecosystem and you’re looking for something free, Google Charts fits the bill perfectly. It supports a good variety of data visualization formats, including scatter plots, geo charts, pie charts, calendar charts, and others. The visualizations look great across different devices and they are rendered using HTML5/SVG.
You can use Google Charts to create bar charts, Gantt charts, donut charts, scatter plots, maps and many other chart types. We wouldn’t use it for enterprise-grade apps, but for a simple lightweight app, it works just fine!
If fast-loading charts are important to you, ECharts is a great contender. They support both HTML5 canvas rendering and SVG, making it possible to render large amounts of data in realtime.
This makes it a great library for advanced analytics use cases, like real-time data monitoring or visualizing time series data. It’s highly compatible with JSON data, and offers a Python wrapper too, which makes it a versatile solution.
If you need to visualize geographical data, amCharts is worth checking out. They’ve bundled hundreds of country and regional maps to choose from, both in high and low detail. Their website offers a bunch of interactive demos to browse through.
Chartist is a great option if you’re looking for simple charts with plenty of customization options. What we like most is their animation and transition features: you can apply CSS animations to your SVG-based charts. With media queries, you can make charts look good on any device, whether it’s Windows, iOS or Android.
If you want to leverage the power of D3.js, but you don’t want to go through the learning curve, have a look at C3.js. This API built on top of D3.js makes it easier to create charts without having to write D3 code. However, it is definitely on the simplistic side, lacking deeper functionality that other tools on this list do offer.
Even though they are commonly used in development teams of all sizes, pure JavaScript libraries are not ideal for everyone - and here’s why.
Using a chart library is a neat shortcut for data visualization, but you still need skilled developers to write the code and embed the visualizations in your website or app. If you don’t already have a great developer at hand, you’ll need to hire one (expensive) or get an expert freelancer to help (even more expensive) if you run into front-end or back-end issues.
While libraries give you more flexibility than traditional BI tools, there is no such thing as drag and drop. Forget quick mock-ups or asking your client-facing teams to help create visualizations: everything needs to be done through code.
If you don’t have your data sources set up and ready to go, it can take weeks and sometimes months to go from an idea to a finished product. You need fully processed data before you can start creating charts, and it takes a lot of tinkering to get it right.
Even though it seems straightforward, going from data points to interactive charts can be very complex.
Despite having more control over visualizations, chart libraries still leave a lot to be desired when it comes to user experience. Interacting with data and filtering across charts often feels counterintuitive. And if you’re serving clients in different languages and timezones, your project will become very complex very quickly if you’re using a basic chart library.
If you’re unsure that customers will find data visualization a valuable aspect of your product, you can create something using Javascript chart libraries. In theory, it’s a good idea, but in practice, it can cost weeks and months of work and thousands of dollars in development costs. If it turns out your customers don’t use the insights at all, you can go back to the drawing board.
If you don’t have a team of skilled developers to spare, embedded analytics tools are a great alternative to chart libraries. With intuitive drag and drop interfaces, they are much quicker and easier to implement.
Especially for quick prototyping, product managers often prefer tools like Luzmo to charting libraries. In a few hours, you can go from prototype to a working MVP with a minimal amount of coding. If you want to gather customer feedback fast without a long product cycle, this is the way to go.
Even though they are easier to use, doesn’t mean they are rigid. While you can’t customize every small detail in a chart’s appearance, you can take customization pretty far. Offering insights in multiple languages, customized to the user who is logged in, interactive filtering,... It’s all possible.
Charting libraries are great for flexibility, but they are slow and cumbersome. Embedded analytics tools are quick and easy, but some product teams are hesitant to use tools that don’t allow full customization through code. There is, however, a third alternative that combines the best of both worlds.
Luzmo Flex is a powerful toolkit for building data products. It sits between “off-the-shelf” analytics and custom-built data products. Imagine a solution that lets you build a prototype quickly with only drag and drop, and then further customize it through code.
Product managers love the fast prototyping. They can launch an MVP with minimal code and get quick user feedback, without making their developer’s life hard. Developers, on the other hand, can build further on top of prototypes with all the coding flexibility they desire.
It can be as easy as changing the appearance of a chart, or as complex as building a custom AI-powered data analyst. With Luzmo Flex, the possibilities for your data product are endless.
Building data visualizations with your own team can seem like the only path you can take. However, there is always a choice and you don’t have to resort to using Javascript chart libraries.
Sign up for a free trial of Luzmo and try out a faster alternative to Javascript libraries without compromising on functionality. Save time and money, while giving your users real-time insights to make data-driven decisions!
Build your first embedded data product now. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
