head to head · open source
deck.gl vs G6
deck.gl has 14,597 GitHub stars, 2,269 forks, 532 open issues and last shipped yesterday. G6 has 12,300 stars, 1,646 forks, 333 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. deck.gl leads on adoption by 19% (14,597 vs 12,300 stars). deck.gl is written in TypeScript under MIT; G6 is written in TypeScript under MIT. deck.gl has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, G6 13%. deck.gl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (data-visualization, visualization), 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 | G6 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-07-15 |
| 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 G6 if
- You want the G6 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and G6 fits your workflow better
About deck.gl
deck.gl is an MIT licensed, WebGL2 and WebGPU powered visualization framework that renders large scale geospatial and data driven layers in the browser, built for JavaScript, TypeScript and Python developers who need high performance maps and custom visualizations without writing their own GPU rendering code.
read the full deck.gl overview →
About G6
G6 is a TypeScript graph visualization engine, published as @antv/g6 under the MIT licence, that provides the drawing, layout, analysis, interaction, animation, theme and plugin primitives developers need to build their own graph visualization and analysis applications.
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Frequently asked questions
Is deck.gl or G6 more popular?
deck.gl has 14,597 GitHub stars and G6 has 12,300. deck.gl has the larger community by that measure.
Are deck.gl and G6 free?
Both are open source. deck.gl is licensed under MIT and G6 under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between deck.gl and G6?
deck.gl is written in TypeScript and G6 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 G6?
Choose deck.gl if you want the larger community (14,597 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose G6 if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.