head to head · open source
Mermaid vs datalens
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars, 9,444 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped yesterday. datalens has 1,708 stars, 119 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Mermaid leads on adoption by 5,227% (90,981 vs 1,708 stars). Mermaid is written in TypeScript under MIT; datalens is written in PLpgSQL under Apache-2.0. Mermaid has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, datalens 7%. 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 | datalens | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | PLpgSQL |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 119 |
| 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 datalens if
- You want the datalens feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PLpgSQL
- You evaluated both and datalens 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…
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About datalens
DataLens · DataLens is a modern business intelligence and data visualization system. It was developed and extensively used as a primary BI tool in Yandex and is also available as a part of Yandex Cloud platform. See also our roadmap, releases notes and community in telegram. Getting started Installing Docker DataLens requires Docker to be installed. Follow these instructions depending on the platform you use: macOS Linux Windows Note about Docker Compose: The new Docker Compose plugin is available as the docker compose v2 package on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04/24.04 from the base APT repository. The minimal…
read the full datalens overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mermaid or datalens more popular?
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars and datalens has 1,708. Mermaid has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mermaid and datalens free?
Both are open source. Mermaid is licensed under MIT and datalens under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mermaid and datalens?
Mermaid is written in TypeScript and datalens in PLpgSQL. 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 datalens?
Choose Mermaid if you want the larger community (90,981 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose datalens if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.