Top 15 JavaScript Visualization Libraries [Updated 2024 List]

Explore the top JavaScript Visualization Libraries and select the best JavaScript graphics library for visualizing data, creating charts and graphs, etc:

This tutorial explains data visualization with JavaScript charting and graphics libraries to visualize data coming from an external source, like an API or a database.

Let’s first try to understand what exactly data visualization is.

Simply stated, data visualization is a means to represent data and information in some form of graphical format, be it charts, bar graphs, pie charts, heat maps, or some other form. Visual representation is easy to interpret and make sense of.

In this article, we will look at different such libraries available in the JavaScript ecosystem that the developer could use to visualize data for other sources.

Understanding JavaScript Charting Libraries

JavaScript supports both open-source and commercial charting and graphics libraries, and we will be looking at details of the available libraries and their costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q #1) How do you visualize data in JavaScript?

Answer: JavaScript is one of the most widely used scripting languages for the client-side and is now heavily used for creating appealing data visualizations for modern web and mobile browsers.

The steps required to visualize the data are as below:

• Create basic HTML.
• Use JavaScript to fetch data, for example, from an API or any other data source.
• Understand data and verify what property needs to be visualized.
• Create a data table. For example, a bar graph would have two axes for representing two measures.
• Select a charting library and create objects as supported by the chosen library.
• Add metadata like axis labels, tooltip texts, and so on for easy reference.
• Test the visualization and repeat the above steps as needed.

Q #2) Can I use HighCharts for free?

Answer: HighCharts can be used for free for noncommercial usages, such as not-for-profit education portals and open-source projects.

For commercial use, Highcharts offers premium versions for single developers and a multi-developer license with an option to choose features.

Q #3) How do I make a graph in JavaScript?

Answer: You can make a graph against the data fetched from an external source or mentioned in line. You can use one of the several libraries that offer charting and graph support.

Q #4) Which is better: Chart.js or D3.js?

Answer: These libraries support many charting capabilities and can be chosen depending on the use case we are trying to solve. For the effortless need for building charts and graphs, it’s recommended to use Chart.js as it’s easy to learn and use and has a minimal learning curve compared to D3.js.

For a more complex charting need—for example, chart types not supported in Chart.js are boxplot, heatmap, and ridgeline—you would need to use D3.js.

Q #5) Where is data visualization used?

Answer: With tons of gigabytes of affluent users and automation data available, visualization becomes equally important.

Data visualization can be seen everywhere—from companies’ annual reports to displays of statistics for a class, marks distribution, weather information, and election results.

Q #6) Is data visualization a form of business intelligence?

Answer: Data scientists worldwide solve critical business problems by gaining insights from the raw data collected across different systems.

Data visualization is a means to derive intelligence and actionable insights by looking at and studying carefully functional patterns indicating customer behavior and driving companies’ marketing and sales strategies with the derived results.

A small example could be visualizing sales numbers for a particular product during the Christmas holidays.

With business intelligence, you can dig deep into the data, analyze previous years’ data, build a hypothesis, create a marketing strategy around those products, and maybe increase prices to drive the bottom line.

Q #7) Which can you use as a library for charts in JavaScript?

Answer: Many charting libraries written in JavaScript would be used as a reference in other JavaScript files for implementing charts and graphs.

Some of the JS charting libraries include FusionCharts, HighCharts, ChartKick, and Chart.js.

HighCharts offers the widest options for charts but doesn’t come for free for any enterprise products. Others like FusionCharts, ChartKick, and Chart.js have wonderful opportunities for charts and graphs and are open-sourced, thus free to use.

List Of The Top JavaScript Visualization Libraries

Here is the list of popular JavaScript data visualization libraries:

1. FusionCharts Suite (Recommended)
2. D3.js
3. Chart.js
4. Taucharts
5. Two.js
6. Pts.js
7. Raphael.js
8. Anime.js
9. ReCharts
10. Trading Vue.js
11. HighCharts
12. ChartKick
13. Pixi.js
14. Three.js
15. Zdog

Comparison Chart of JavaScript Graphics Libraries

Detailed review:

#1) FusionCharts Suite (Recommended)

FusionCharts is best for web and enterprise application charting and data visualization requirements.

FusionCharts provides a wide range of charts and mapping capabilities, with 100+ charts and 2,000+ maps to work with. It’s one of the most comprehensive libraries available on the market.

Refer to a sample app publishing trend bar charts created using FusionCharts.

You can perform different customizations, like choosing themes, custom-tip text, creating axis labels, and more.

Refer below for another example of creating a map using FusionCharts, representing average temperature across US states during 1979-2000.

Features:

• Support for 100+ charts and 2,000+ maps.
• Suited for web and mobile platforms across browsers.
• Lots of customization options.
• One of the most powerful and complete solutions.
• Performance is decent; you can draw charts with a million data points in approximately 1.5 to 2 seconds.
• Comprehensive documentation.

Pros:

• Easy to learn and integrate with different tech stacks.
• Charts and maps are easy to configure.
• Easy integration with most of the JavaScript frameworks like Angular, React, Vue, and Server-side programming languages like Java, Ruby on Rails, Django, etc.

Cons:

• FusionCharts comes with a licensing fee for advance usage.

Pricing:

• It comes in different plans:
  • Basic: $499/year for a single developer suite for small internal apps.
  • Pro and Enterprise editions: $1,299 and $2,499 annually with support for 5 and 10 developers, respectively.
  • Enterprise+: Suited for larger organizations; pricing is available on request.

#2) D3.js

Best for building dynamic and interactive data visualizations for web browsers.

D3.js is one of the most popular data visualization libraries being used by developers across the globe and is used to manipulate documents based on data. It uses modern web standards like SVG, HTML, and CSS for building graphs, maps, and pie charts.

Features:

• Data-driven with support for declarative programming.
• Highly robust and flexible.
• Supports animations, interactivity, and data-driven plots for better user experience.

Pros:

• Easy customizations.
• Lightweight and fast.
• Good community support.

Cons:

• It is not very easy to learn; it requires good experience in web development.
• It comes with a licensing fee.

Pricing:

• Developer license: $7 per user monthly
• Team or organization account license: Starts at $9/month.

=> Visit D3.js Website

#3) Chart.js

Best for teams and developers looking for basic charting requirements and an open-sourced product.

It’s a simple charting library for JavaScript designers and developers.

Features:

• Uses HTML5 Canvas for great rendering and performance across all modern browsers.
• Responsive as it redraws the chart based on window size.

Pros:

• Fast and lightweight.
• Detailed documentation with easy-to-understand examples.
• Free and open-sourced.

Cons:

• Limited features supporting only eight graph types.
• It doesn’t offer a lot of customization options.
• It’s canvas-based, so it has issues like nonvector formats.

Pricing:

• Chart.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Chart.js Website

#4) Taucharts

Best for teams building complex data visualizations.

Features:

• Good framework with support for extensibility.
• It can create highly complex data visualizations.
• Declarative interface for fast mapping of data fields to visuals.

Pros:

• Based on the D3 framework and Grammar of Graphics concepts.
• Supports several plugins, like a tooltip, annotations, etc., out of the box.

Cons:

• Needs good development experience to use and build charts

Pricing:

• TauCharts is open-sourced and free to use

=> Visit Taucharts Website

#5) Two.js

Best for open-source library for rendering 2-D shapes.

It’s a two-dimensional library used to create shapes with code. It renders agnostic so that you can use it agnostically with Canvas, SVG, or WebGL.

Features:

• Focuses on vector shapes to build and animate flat shapes concisely.
• It relies on scenegraph to help apply multiple operations on the created object.
• Built-in animation loop and SVG interpreter.

Pros:

• Easy to learn and use.
• Since it’s rendered agnostic, it can help in drawing the same object across multiple contexts.

Cons:

• Limited support for only 2-D objects.
• Not suited for charting needs like graphs and interactive visualizations.

Pricing:

• Two.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Two.js Website

#6) Pts.js

Best for composing objects as you perceive them with a basic level of abstraction as points.

Pts is a JavaScript library for data visualization and creative coding. It’s written in typescript and is supported by numerous practical algorithms for visualization and creative coding.

Features:

• Lightweight and modular library.
• It helps to express what you see in your mind’s eye with focused objects, visualizing ideas, shapes, colors, and interactions.

Pros:

• Supports multiple algorithms for data visualization.
• Lightweight.
• Good documentation and easy-to-get-started examples.

Pricing:

• Pts.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Pts.js Website

#7) Raphael.js

Best for creating detailed drawings and graphics with very few lines of code.

It’s a lightweight JavaScript graphic library and framework that allows you to create vector images for web-based applications.

Features:

• Cross-browser scripting library that can draw vector graphics.
• Designed especially for artists and graphic designers.

Pros:

• SVG support can help to create beautiful and professional graphics.
• Works seamlessly across browsers.
• Small learning curve.

Cons:

• It doesn’t support charting and data visualization capabilities.

Pricing:

• Raphael.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Raphael.js Website

#8) Anime.js

Best for creating powerful user interface animation with support for all major modern browsers.

Anime.js is one of the most preferred libraries for creating UI animation for web-based applications. It’s lightweight, accessible, and open-sourced.

Features:

• Works with CSS properties, SVG, DOM attributes, and JS objects.
• Animate multiple CSS transforms simultaneously on a single HTML element.

Pros:

• Lightweight and easy to use.
• Easy setup and is relatively intuitive.
• Compatible with modern browsers.

Cons:

• Documentation is not very detailed.
• Animation requires selectors but needs an understanding of styling and animation definitions.

Pricing:

• Anime.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Anime.js Website

#9) ReCharts

Best for teams looking to create charts for React-based web applications.

It’s a charting library built on React components.

Features:

• Decoupled, reusable React components.
• Native support for SVG and is extremely lightweight.
• Support for declarative components.

Pros:

• Intuitive API and easy to use.
• Composable elements were available as React components.
• Highly responsive.
• Great options to customize charts.

Pricing:

• ReCharts is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit ReCharts Website

#10) TradingVue.jsThese

Best for building advanced charts primarily for web-based Forex and stock-trading applications.

Trading Vue.js library is primarily used for building charts and graphs for web-based trading applications. It can help you to draw anything on candlestick charts literally.

Features:

• Simple API for making overlays and components.
• Support for customizing fonts and colors.
• High performance.
• Supports deep zoom and scroll.

Pros:

• Fully reactive and responsive.
• Supports creating custom indicators.

Cons:

• Not very actively maintained.

Pricing:

• Trading Vue.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Trading Vue.js Website

#11) HighCharts

Best for teams looking for an extensive charting library for supporting multiple platforms like web and mobile.

It’s a JavaScript-based charting library that you can use for highly interactive charts, maps, and animations. Over 80% of the world’s top 100 companies use HighCharts for their web-based charting needs.

Features:

• Supports multiple platforms, web, and mobile.
• Support for data import and export.
• Has an open, dynamic API.
• Supports external data loading with tooltip labels and multiple axes support.

Pros:

• Offers multiple configurations and customizations.
• Compatible with all modern web and mobile browsers.
• Extensible library.

Cons:

• Has a moderate to steep learning curve.
• Creating complex charts is not straightforward.

Pricing:

• HighCharts is free for noncommercial users.
• Offers free trials.
• Paid versions come in single-developer as well as enterprise editions:
  • Single developer: Starts at $430
  • 5 developmentcan’t.$1,935

=> Visit HighCharts Website

#12) ChartKick

Best for creating basic charts across multiple programming language libraries like Python, Ruby, JS, etc.

ChartKick can create beautiful charts with very minimal code.

Features:

• Data can be passed as a hash or array for creating charts or graphs.
• Supports other charting libraries like HighCharts, Google Charts, etc.

Pros:

• Supports libraries in multiple programming languages.
• It gives users the ability to download charts out of the box.

Cons:

• It doesn’t support complex chart types and customizations.

Pricing:

• ChartKick is open-sourced and free to use

=> Visit ChartKick Website

#13) Pixi.js

Best for teams looking for JavaScript libraries to create digital content based on HTML5.

Pixi.js is an HTML5 renderer based on WebGL and is widely used for web-based games.

Features:

• Rendering library to create rich, interactive graphics.
• Supports cross-platform applications and games.

Pros:

• It can’t be used for creating interactive content for desktop and mobile with a single codebase.
• Easy-to-use API.
• Support for WebGL filters.

Cons:

• Pixi.js is a renderer and not a complete framework, unlike other game development tools like Unity of Phaser.
• Doesn’t support rendering 3-D models.

Pricing:

• Pixi.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Pixi.js Website

#14) Three.js

Best for generating 3-D graphics for web-based applications.

Three.js is a cross-browser JS library for creating 3-D computer graphics in a web browser. It is widely used for JS-based game development.

Features:

• Lightweight cross-browser general-purpose 3-D library.
• Supports WebGL renderer.
• Handles WebGL components like lights, shadows, and materials out of the box, making it easy to create complex objects.

Pros:

• Easy to learn with lots of examples available.
• Good community support and documentation.
• Highly performant.

Cons:

• It’s more suited as a rendering engine and not a complete framework.
• It doesn’t support a deferred rendering pipeline.

Pricing:

• Three.js is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit Three.jS Website

#15) ZDog

Best for open-sourced doesn’t give creating and rendering 3-D images for canvas and SVG.

ZDog is a 3-D JS engine for HTML5 canvas and SVG. It’s a pseudo-3-D engine in that the shapes are 3-D but are rendered as flat shapes on screen.

Features:

• Extremely lightweight.
• Supports vector illustration in 3-D.

Pros:

• Easy to learn and use.
• Used for building lightweight 3-D games.

Cons:

• Doesn’t support complex graphics and charts.

Pricing:

• ZDog is open-sourced and free to use.

=> Visit ZDog Website

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about various data visualization and charting libraries that are built-in JavaScript and can be used within JavaScript to create appealing visualizations and help to render objects such as charts and graphs to aid data scientists in business intelligence and make information interpretable for the end-user.

JavaScript offers both free and paid types of libraries that can be chosen depending on the user’s need, what kind of information needs to be retrieved, and how it needs to be visualized.

The most commonly used open-source charting and graphics libraries are Charts.js and Anime.js, which are used for creating most of the basic charts as well as adding animations to user interfaces for web-based applications.

From the paid libraries, the ones commonly preferred by developers are FusionCharts Suite and D3.js.