head to head · open source
Mermaid vs deck.gl
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars, 9,444 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deck.gl has 14,728 stars, 2,297 forks, 532 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mermaid leads on adoption by 518% (90,981 vs 14,728 stars). Mermaid is written in TypeScript under MIT; deck.gl is written in TypeScript under MIT. Mermaid has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, deck.gl 16%. deck.gl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (javascript), 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
| Mermaid | deck.gl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 deck.gl if
- You want the deck.gl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and deck.gl 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 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Mermaid or deck.gl more popular?
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars and deck.gl has 14,728. Mermaid has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mermaid and deck.gl free?
Both are open source. Mermaid is licensed under MIT and deck.gl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mermaid and deck.gl?
Mermaid is written in TypeScript and deck.gl 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, Mermaid or deck.gl?
Choose Mermaid if you want the larger community (90,981 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose deck.gl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.