If you are working on a React project, then it is important for you to gather and filter large amounts of data from the internet. However, all this data is not organized and very difficult for an average person to comprehend. To understand and reap value from such data, it has to be presented in a proper and comprehensive manner. 

However, you can create React charts from scratch in case of a small project, but you will surely require a 3rd-party React charts library for a large project. Since, there are many libraries that offer React charts for your data visualization needs. They can be a huge time-saver, especially if you’re working on larger projects with lots of interactivity requirements!

In this blog, we will check out some of the best React chart libraries available out there that you can use.

Metrics to Consider While Choosing a React Chart Library

GitHub Stats – One of the best code-hosting platforms, GitHub lets teams and developers collaborate on their projects globally. It provides vital metrics like Star, Fork, License, etc. 

NPM Trends – It is a great platform to compare downloads of various React chart libraries. The all-in-one source has links to every library’s NPM JS page and official GitHub page.

NPMJS – Node JavaScript platform’s package manager service, NPM JS has all vital modules to manage dependency conflicts. Developers can use it to check stats like weekly downloads that tell about the popularity of a React chart library. 

Stack Overflow Questions – A Q/A forum for developers and programmers, it helps them judge the popularity and reliability of a React chart library with an estimate of developers talking about it.

The Best React Chart Libraries

Recharts

Among the most reliable libraries for React, recharts offers native SVG support with just light dependency on D3 submodules. recharts makes use of declarative components, and all its components are just for presentational purposes.

recharts has an active community of developers and around 15.1k GitHub stars, making it one of the first libraries that developers consider for their data visualization requirements in React applications. Moreover, it has over 480,000 weekly npm downloads. 

React-chartjs-2

It is not exactly a chart library but a wrapper for the famous chartjs JavaScript chart library. chart.js is lightweight and allows developers to build responsive, interactive chart components through the use of HTML5 Canvas elements. Apart from being beginner-friendly, it provides six different charting styles.

chart.js can be used in Vue.js and React, with both of them having a wrapper library. Even though the library functions as a wrapper for React, a majority of its documentation is of chart.js itself. The best part is that it is thorough with outstanding community support. react-chartjs-2 library has 298,000 weekly npm downloads and around 3.5k GitHub stars. 

Visx

Airbnb’s React chart library Visx has an active repository on GitHub along with 11.3k stars. Visx combines the advantages of both D3.js with React DOM.

The developers behind visx insist that it isn’t a charting library but a collection of low-level reusable data visualization components. 

Nivo

nivo is a collection of components for React, and it can be rendered on the server side, which makes it unique among other React chart libraries. The nivo library has an extensive collection of templates for useful visualization graphs and charts.

A flexible charting library, nivo offers HTML, SVG, and Canvas charts all in one single library, along with transitions and motions powered through react-motion. It has around 7.7k GitHub stars but is a powerful and responsive data visualization solution. 

Victory

Victory is a collection of charting components for React Native and React and makes use of a single API for React Native and web apps to allow simple cross-platform charting. Victory is really easy to learn and use. It even allows quick integration of bar, line, candlestick, and pie charts into your applications. 

Developed by Formidable, a global company featuring skilled designers and developers, Victory is popular worldwide with 8.4k GitHub stars and 141k weekly npm downloads. 

React-vis

The react-vis library is developed by Uber, and you can learn to use this library faster than the time taken to book an Uber ride. The library features a host of React components to render data visualization charts. 

You can put all common and complex types of charts in your apps, including line, bar, area charts, scatterplots, heatmaps, donut and pie charts, contour plots, tree maps, sunbursts, parallel coordinates, radar charts, and much more. react-vis has 7.5k GitHub stars and haven’t released any major update for over five months, but developers praise its documentation. 

Conclusion

Whether you want easy integration, attractive graph and chart designing, or convenient comparison of data sets, using a React charts library is the best option available for you. Your data visualization requirements for your React apps will become easier through their use.

All the chart libraries we discussed above are well-maintained, recommended by developers worldwide, and will help you represent data in whichever way you wish. Check out what each library offers and whether or not it fulfills your needs before finalizing one.