StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Business Tools
  3. UI Components
  4. Charting Libraries
  5. Highcharts vs JFreeChart

Highcharts vs JFreeChart

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Highcharts
Highcharts
Stacks1.5K
Followers1.1K
Votes92
JFreeChart
JFreeChart
Stacks47
Followers23
Votes2
GitHub Stars1.3K
Forks569

Highcharts vs JFreeChart: What are the differences?

Highcharts vs JFreeChart

Highcharts and JFreeChart are both popular charting libraries that offer a variety of features for creating interactive and visually appealing charts. However, there are several key differences between the two:

  1. Implementation Language: Highcharts is primarily developed using JavaScript and offers seamless integration with web technologies like HTML and CSS. On the other hand, JFreeChart is a Java-based library, making it more suitable for desktop applications or server-side rendering.

  2. Chart Types and Customizability: Highcharts offers a wide range of chart types, including line, bar, pie, scatter, and more. It also provides extensive customization options for styling and configuring the charts. In contrast, JFreeChart supports a limited set of chart types, although it allows for fine-grained customization through various APIs and interfaces.

  3. Interactivity and Animation: Highcharts places a strong emphasis on interactivity, providing features like tooltips, drilldowns, and responsive design out of the box. It also supports smooth animations to enhance the user experience. JFreeChart, while offering basic interactivity, may require additional programming to achieve similar effects.

  4. Accessibility and Internationalization: Highcharts prioritizes accessibility and internationalization, providing built-in support for multiple languages and keyboard navigation. JFreeChart, being a more traditional Java library, may require manual implementation of accessibility features.

  5. Licensing: Highcharts is a commercial library and requires a valid license for commercial use. However, it offers a free version for non-commercial and personal use. JFreeChart, on the other hand, is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and can be used freely in both commercial and non-commercial projects.

  6. Community and Support: Highcharts has a large and active community, with regular updates and responsive support. It provides extensive documentation, examples, and online forums. JFreeChart also has an active community, but its development pace and support may not be as rapid as Highcharts.

In summary, Highcharts and JFreeChart differ in terms of implementation language, chart types and customization, interactivity and animation, accessibility and internationalization, licensing, and community/support. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements of the project and the preferred programming language.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Highcharts, JFreeChart

Shaik
Shaik

Feb 18, 2020

Needs advice

I have used highcharts and it is pretty awesome for my previous project. now as I am about to start my new project I want to use other charting libraries such as recharts, chart js, Nivo, d3 js.... my upcoming project might use react js as front end and laravel as a backend technology. the project would be of hotel management type. please suggest me the best charts to use

247k views247k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Highcharts
Highcharts
JFreeChart
JFreeChart

Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie, scatter, angular gauges, arearange, areasplinerange, columnrange, bubble, box plot, error bars, funnel, waterfall and polar chart types.

It is a free Java chart library that makes it easy for developers to display professional quality charts in their applications. It has a consistent and well-documented API, supporting a wide range of chart types.

It works in all modern mobile and desktop browsers including the iPhone/iPad and Internet Explorer from version 6;Free for non-commercial;One of the key features of Highcharts is that under any of the licenses, free or not, you are allowed to download the source code and make your own edits;Pure Javascript - Highcharts is solely based on native browser technologies and doesn't require client side plugins like Flash or Java.
Flexible design that is easy to extend, and targets both server-side and client-side applications; Support for many output types, including Swing and JavaFX components, image files (including PNG and JPEG), and vector graphics file formats (including PDF, EPS and SVG); open source or, more specifically, free software
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
1.3K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
569
Stacks
1.5K
Stacks
47
Followers
1.1K
Followers
23
Votes
92
Votes
2
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 34
    Low learning curve and powerful
  • 17
    Multiple chart types such as pie, bar, line and others
  • 13
    Responsive charts
  • 9
    Handles everything you throw at it
  • 8
    Extremely easy-to-parse documentation
Cons
  • 9
    Expensive
Pros
  • 1
    Very, very customizable
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 0
    Easy to user
Cons
  • 1
    Lots of code
Integrations
No integrations available
Java
Java
JavaFX
JavaFX

What are some alternatives to Highcharts, JFreeChart?

D3.js

D3.js

It is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Emphasises on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework.

Plotly.js

Plotly.js

It is a standalone Javascript data visualization library, and it also powers the Python and R modules named plotly in those respective ecosystems (referred to as Plotly.py and Plotly.R). It can be used to produce dozens of chart types and visualizations, including statistical charts, 3D graphs, scientific charts, SVG and tile maps, financial charts and more.

Chart.js

Chart.js

Visualize your data in 6 different ways. Each of them animated, with a load of customisation options and interactivity extensions.

Recharts

Recharts

Quickly build your charts with decoupled, reusable React components. Built on top of SVG elements with a lightweight dependency on D3 submodules.

ECharts

ECharts

It is an open source visualization library implemented in JavaScript, runs smoothly on PCs and mobile devices, and is compatible with most current browsers.

ZingChart

ZingChart

The most feature-rich, fully customizable JavaScript charting library available used by start-ups and the Fortune 100 alike.

amCharts

amCharts

amCharts is an advanced charting library that will suit any data visualization need. Our charting solution include Column, Bar, Line, Area, Step, Step without risers, Smoothed line, Candlestick, OHLC, Pie/Donut, Radar/ Polar, XY/Scatter/Bubble, Bullet, Funnel/Pyramid charts as well as Gauges.

CanvasJS

CanvasJS

Lightweight, Beautiful & Responsive Charts that make your dashboards fly even with millions of data points! Self-Hosted, Secure & Scalable charts that render across devices.

AnyChart

AnyChart

AnyChart is a flexible JavaScript (HTML5) based solution that allows you to create interactive and great looking charts. It is a cross-browser and cross-platform charting solution intended for everybody who deals with creation of dashboard, reporting, analytics, statistical, financial or any other data visualization solutions.

ApexCharts

ApexCharts

A modern JavaScript charting library to build interactive charts and visualizations with simple API.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase