Apache ECharts — Powerful Interactive Charting Library

What ECharts Does

• 40+ chart types — line, bar, scatter, pie, radar, heatmap, treemap, sunburst, sankey, funnel, gauge, graph, map, candlestick, boxplot, parallel
• 3D charts — ECharts GL extension
• Geographic — world/country maps, GeoJSON, Baidu map integration
• Interactive — zoom, brush, data zoom, legend filter
• Streaming data — append-only updates for realtime
• Canvas or SVG — switch renderers
• Themes — built-in + custom
• Responsive — chart.resize() or container watching

Architecture

Canvas-based renderer by default, SVG optional. Option object is declarative (JSON-like). Chart holds option snapshots internally for diff updates. Built on top of the ZRender graphics library (also Apache project).

Self-Hosting

Client library, ships in bundle.

Key Features

• 40+ chart types
• Canvas + SVG renderers
• Enterprise-scale datasets (100K+ points)
• Geographic and 3D
• Streaming/incremental updates
• WebGL via ECharts GL
• Dark mode themes
• Responsive by design
• Apache 2.0 (permissive)

Comparison

FAQ

Q: ECharts or Chart.js — which should I choose? A: Chart.js aims for simplicity (8 chart types); ECharts aims for completeness (40+ charts, plus maps and 3D). Use ECharts for complex enterprise dashboards and Chart.js for simple frontend displays.

Q: Bundle too large? A: v5 supports on-demand imports like import { BarChart } from "echarts/charts"; after tree-shaking, only what you use remains.

Q: How do I integrate with React/Vue? A: There are official echarts-for-react / vue-echarts wrappers, or you can initialize manually with a ref + useEffect.

Sources & Credits

• Docs: https://echarts.apache.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/apache/echarts
• License: Apache 2.0