Visualize Your Data: 25 Javascript Visualization Libraries

Now: 27 JAVASCRIPT VISUALIZATION LIBRARIES (update 3-5-2021)

You have a huge amount of data that you need to present to your website visitors in a clear and concise way. First of all, you have to organise that data so that it's understandable to everyone in some way, right? That's where graphics come in. In web design, graphs are the best tool for data visualisation. They are easy to read and interpret, and for developers, simple to implement.

But let's take this to the next level: let's add animations and interactivity to the charts, so that readers not only learn something new from the chart, but can also play with them. It's actually easier than it sounds, thanks to a number of JS libraries out there on the web. Let's check out these libraries.

To help you get started visualizing your data, we have collected some of the best JavaScript visualization solutions for your web projects.

1. sigmajs

Sigmajs is an open-source lightweight JavaScript library to draw graphs, using the HTML canvas element. It has been especially designed to display interactively static graphs exported from a graph visualization software and dynamically graphs that are generated on the fly.

2. ZingChart

Add a little zing to your analytical apps with Zing Chart a freemium charting library that has plenty of great features and lots of chart types. ZingChart offers a modern, highly visual set of charts with features including horizontal style tooltips which to be fair are pretty unique and work very well. It also comes with pan and zoom interactivity straight out the box.

Notable Feature List

• Zoom, Pan, Select interactivity
• 2d & 3d charts
• Unique ‘Crosshair’ tooltips
• Drill down capability out of the box
• On-chart image rendering

3. D3.js

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG and CSS. D3’s emphasis on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework, combining powerful visualization components and a data-driven approach to DOM manipulation.

4. heatmap.js

Heatmap.js is an open source JavaScript library that can be used for generating realtime heatmaps. It uses the power and flexibility of the HTML5 canvas element to draw heatmaps based on your data.

5. GO js

Interactive JavaScript Diagrams for the Web. GoJS offers several built-in animations, enabled by default, as well as the ability to create arbitrary animations.

The Diagram.animationManager handles animations within a Diagram. The AnimationManager automatically sets up and dispatches default animations, and has properties to customize and disable them. Custom animations are possible by creating instances of Animation or AnimationTrigger.

6. Envision.js

Envision.js is a library for creating fast, dynamic and interactive HTML5 visualizations.

A modern graphing library for Canvas written in JavaScript.

Features:

• mobile support
• framework independent
• lines, bars, bubbles and more
• extensible plugin framework
• FF, Chrome, IE6+

7. JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit

The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web.

8. bonsaiJS

A lightweight graphics library with an intuitive graphics API and an SVG renderer.

9.SciChart.js

Realtime JavaScript Charts. With cutting-edge, award-winning graphics engine in WebAssembly & WebGL, SciChart.js brings you the world's fastest JavaScript Chart Component. Plot millions of data-points in realtime, create next-generation streaming, updating financial, medical, scientific and big-data business applications.

10. C3.js MORE INFO

C3.js is another easy-to-use JavaScript library for creating charts. It uses the D3 graphics library, so to create a chart with it, we’ll need both D3 and the C3 library itself.

By default, C3 displays the chart in a div with ID chart. If we want to display the chart in a different element, we can add the bindto property to the object we pass into the c3.generate function.

11. MetricsGraphics.js

MetricsGraphics.js is another D3-based charting library that lets us create charts with ease. It only supports displaying time series data with line charts, scatter plots, histograms, and data tables. jQuery is required to display tooltips.

12. Plotly

Plotly is a graphing library that’s available for various runtime environments, including the browser. It supports many kinds of charts and graphs that we can configure with a variety of options.

Support for basic charts like line charts, bar charts, pie charts, and scatter plots are built-in. More complex charts like error bars, box plots, and histograms are also supported. It also has support for rendering maps and 3D charts.

To get started, we just have to include the Plotly library itself.

13. NVD3.js

NVD3 is a library that sits on top of the d3.js JavaScript library utilizing many of the usual traits.

NVD3 is now in version 1.8.6 which is up from its initial release of 0.9 back in 2013. The library doesn’t have every single chart imaginable but has all the most popular core ones. For example, scatter, bar, line. The rendered charts have a very easy-on-the-eye style with pastel-like colours that go well with any dashboard.

Notable Feature List

• Completely responsive
• User-friendly tooltips
• Customizable tooltips
• Easy to work with JSON
• Series turn on / turn off
• Legends
• Dual-axis capability
• Quick and easy to download and use
• Plenty of examples
• Live chart playground

14. Dygraphs

Dygraphs is probably one of the fastest rendering charts I have come across, especially when the data set is vast. This library can handle data sets going into the tens of thousands and still deliver a great user experience.

The one drawback to all this glory is that it’s completely based on line graphs. No bars, pies, or anything that you would usually see in a JavaScript charting library. Not to worry though, it’s still an epic package, and here’s why.

Notable Feature List

• Can handle huge data sets and is superior in this department when compared to other libraries
• Cross chart synchronization
• Annotations, and highly customizable annotations at that
• Range/Viewfinder
• Very simple to get develop with
• Perfect for real-time data visualization
• Extremely fast data point feedback with off-chart data display
• Zoom in and out functionality
• Plenty of examples with links to JSFiddles
• Easy to work with data, simple arrays, or load from text or CSV files

Vis.js

Vis.js is a very versatile parent library of other sub-libraries including networking, timeline, 2d, and 3d visualization capabilities. This library offers 3d charts which are pretty rare amongst most charting libraries which definitely gives it an edge.

Vis.js has some stunning visualizations in both 2d and 3d forms but of course, all will serve specific purposes. Personally, I’ve never come across the need to use 3d charts but if your working in some type of scientific data analysis background, I could imagine it would be useful.

Notable Feature List

• 3D Charts
• 2D Charts
• Multi-chart capability
• Optional tooltips
• 3D interactivity on relevant charts
• Chart playgrounds demonstrating many of its features
• Flawless animations

16. ApexCharts.js

ApexChart.js comes with a variety of elegant features to bring beautiful data analysis to your web pages. On paper, this library ticks nearly all the boxes you would usually want it for. With annotation capability which is relatively rare in free-to-use packages. Responsiveness and animations and to top all that off, it looks pretty great too.

17. Processing.js

Processing.js is the sister project of the popular Processing visual programming language, designed for the web. Processing.js makes your data visualizations, digital art, interactive animations, educational graphs, video games, etc. work using web standards and without any plug-ins. You write code using the Processing language, include it in your web page, and Processing.js does the rest. It's not magic, but almost.

18. Vivagraph JS

VivaGraphJS is a free graph drawing library for JavaScript. It is designed to be extensible and to support different rendering engines and layout algorithms. At the moment it supports rendering graphs using WebGL, SVG or CSS formats.

19. Billboard.js

In what feels like a very minimalist library, billboard.js comes with a good set of charts for data visualization. It’s based on D3 version 4 and has similarities to c3.js charts. Billboard has a stacked list of charts to use and a huge load of configurable assets such as the legend, axis, and tooltips.

Notable Feature List

• Vast customization allowing you to get the exact visualization for the job at hand
• Completely responsive
• Tooltips and dual chart linked tooltips
• Manual Zoom, drag zoom, and sub-charts with viewfinder zoom
• Easily added labeled Y lines which are great for added analysis
• Gradient chart area fills

20. FrappeCharts

If you’re a keen developer, then you’ll probably feel familiar with the way that Frappe Charts look and feel. That’s because the charts designs are inspired by charts you find on GitHub. You will recognize the heatmap straight away if you’ve been making plenty of commits lately.

Features:

• Rapid export an SVG capability which is basically an instant export to image (SVG) file.
• Annotations
• GitHub theme inspired which is extremely clean
• Beautiful animations during chart updates
• Mixed chart capability
• Epic looking tooltips when using multi/mixed charts
• Fully responsive
• Zero dependencies

21. ToastUI

ToastUI is a very visual, modernized library that not only offers pretty much all the common charts but looks brilliant too. Each chart has the capability to be exported in a variety of ways including .xls (data), .jpg (image). This of course is very handy for the end-user, especially the ability to export the data behind the chart for further analysis.

Notable Feature List

• Multi export functionality which includes .xls, .csv, .jpg and .png
• Completely responsive for the modern web
• Nice animations during real-time data updates
• Beautiful animations during chart updates
• Deselectable/selectable data series
• Zero dependencies

22. JSXGraph

Interactive geometry, plotting, visualization JSXGraph is a cross-browser JavaScript library for interactive geometry, function plotting, charting, and data visualization in the web browser.

23. Toxiclibs.js

Toxiclibs was originally written by Karsten Schmidt for Java and Processing and is being ported to javascript by Kyle Phillips.

Toxiclibs.js works great with Canvas, SVG or any DOM element. Examples below pair with such fine libraries as: Processing.js, Three.js, or Raphael.js for SVG.

24. RoughViz

RoughViz is certainly one to look at in 2021, built upon d3.js version 5, brings very unique visualizations to your front end. The rendered charts are almost like crayon drawings, with rough borders and coloring, it actually really pleases the eye. The library is super-easy to work with utilizing array-based data sets and various options easily modified.

Notable Feature List

• Very unique, nothing else around like it
• Plenty of customizable options
• Tooltips
• Built upon d3.js version 5

25. AmCharts

AmCharts is a massive library with pretty much every chart you could possibly imagine including the ability to customize in some really cool ways. AmCharts is a ‘freemium’ library so-to-speak, anyone can use the charts or maps, etc if they don’t mind a small attribution logo being displayed under the visualizations. And to be fair, the attribution is barely noticeable and certainly non-intrusive. AmCharts have a bunch of high-profile clients such as Microsoft, Amazon, Nasa, eBay, and more.

Notable Feature List

• Maps, charts, timelines, you name it, AmChart have it
• Incredible animations
• Vastly customizable
• Ability to nest charts within charts such as a pie chart within each bar of a bar chart
• Pictorial chart capability
• Huge documentation base with hundreds of demonstrations to explore
• Examples demonstrated in both Vanilla JS and TypeScript/ES6

26. Chart.js

Everything you need to know to create great looking charts using Chart.js. Easy, object oriented client side graphs for designers and developers

Notable Feature List

• Very easy to work with without the knowledge of JSON markup.
• Mixed chart types, build bars and lines onto the same visualization.
• Beautiful animations
• Tooltips
• Renderable on all major browsers including IE11+
• Completely responsive
• Thorough user documentation and sample base
• Includes one of the only free-to-use radar charts that actually works correctly and visualizes data properly.

27. ChartJS.devexpress

First of all, ChartJS is not Chartjs! Whether you are creating traditional websites, sites that target mobile devices, or native apps built with HTML5 JavaScript and compiled with Apache Cordova (PhoneGap), ChartJS provides high-performance and elegant data visualization options for all your business intelligence needs.

Silvia Mazzetta

Web Developer, Blogger, Creative Thinker, Social media enthusiast, Italian expat in Spain, mom of little 7 years old geek, founder of  @manoweb. A strong conceptual and creative thinker who has a keen interest in all things relate to the Internet. A technically savvy web developer, who has multiple  years of website design expertise behind her.  She turns conceptual ideas into highly creative visual digital products.