head to head · open source
deck.gl vs sigma.js
deck.gl has 14,732 GitHub stars, 2,297 forks, 532 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sigma.js has 12,218 stars, 1,619 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. deck.gl leads on adoption by 21% (14,732 vs 12,218 stars). deck.gl is written in TypeScript under MIT; sigma.js is written in TypeScript under MIT. deck.gl has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, sigma.js 13%. deck.gl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (data-visualization, javascript, webgl), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| deck.gl | sigma.js | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick deck.gl if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sigma.js if
- You want the sigma.js feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sigma.js fits your workflow better
About deck.gl
deck.gl Website GPU powered, highly performant large scale data visualization deck.gl is designed to simplify high performance, WebGL2/WebGPU based visualization of large data sets. Users can quickly get impressive visual results with minimal effort by composing existing layers, or leverage deck.gl's extensible architecture to address custom needs. deck.gl maps data (usually an array of JSON objects) into a stack of visual layers e.g. icons, polygons, texts; and look at them with views : e.g. map, first person, orthographic. deck.gl handles a number of challenges out of the box: Performant rendering and updating…
read the full deck.gl overview →
About sigma.js
Website Documentation Storybook Mastodon [!NOTE] Sigma v4 is now available as an alpha release. See v4.sigmajs.org for the website, or the v4 branch for the source code. Sigma.js is an open source JavaScript library aimed at visualizing graphs of thousands of nodes and edges using WebGL, mainly developed by @jacomyal and @Yomguithereal, and built on top of graphology. How to use in your project To integrate sigma into your project, follow these simple steps: 1. Installation: Add sigma and graphology to your project by running the following command: 2. Usage: Import sigma into your JavaScript or TypeScript file…
read the full sigma.js overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is deck.gl or sigma.js more popular?
deck.gl has 14,732 GitHub stars and sigma.js has 12,218. deck.gl has the larger community by that measure.
Are deck.gl and sigma.js free?
Both are open source. deck.gl is licensed under MIT and sigma.js under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between deck.gl and sigma.js?
deck.gl is written in TypeScript and sigma.js in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, deck.gl or sigma.js?
Choose deck.gl if you want the larger community (14,732 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sigma.js if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.