head to head · open source
Mermaid vs charts.css
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars, 9,444 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped yesterday. charts.css has 6,584 stars, 179 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Mermaid leads on adoption by 1,282% (90,981 vs 6,584 stars). Mermaid is written in TypeScript under MIT; charts.css is written in HTML under MIT. Mermaid has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, charts.css 3%. Mermaid was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Mermaid | charts.css | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-04-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 179 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Mermaid if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick charts.css if
- You want the charts.css feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and charts.css fits your workflow better
About Mermaid
Mermaid Generate diagrams from Markdown like text. Live Editor! 📖 Documentation 🚀 Getting Started 🌐 CDN 🙌 Join Us 简体中文 Try Live Editor previews of future releases: Develop Next :trophy: Mermaid was nominated and won the JS Open Source Awards (2019) in the category "The most exciting use of technology"!!! Thanks to all involved, people committing pull requests, people answering questions! 🙏 Table of content Expand contents About Examples Release Related projects Contributors Security and safe diagrams Reporting vulnerabilities Appreciation About Mermaid is a JavaScript based diagramming and charting tool…
read the full Mermaid overview →
About charts.css
Charts.css Charts.css is an open source CSS framework for data visualization. Visualization help end users understand data. Charts.css help frontend developers turn data into beautiful charts and graphs using simple CSS classes . No dependencies. 58.4kb minified size. 5.9kb gzipped file size! Documentation Check the full documentation on ChartsCSS.org. Get Started Components Charts Customization Development Examples Installation CDN Use jsdelivr CDN: Or unpkg CDN: Package Manager Install using npm: Or using yarn: Usage The data is structured using semantic HTML tags and styled using CSS classes which change the…
read the full charts.css overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mermaid or charts.css more popular?
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars and charts.css has 6,584. Mermaid has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mermaid and charts.css free?
Both are open source. Mermaid is licensed under MIT and charts.css under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mermaid and charts.css?
Mermaid is written in TypeScript and charts.css in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Mermaid or charts.css?
Choose Mermaid if you want the larger community (90,981 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose charts.css if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.