head to head · open source
pixijs vs c3
pixijs has 48,178 GitHub stars, 5,071 forks, 344 open issues and last shipped yesterday. c3 has 9,350 stars, 1,360 forks, 771 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. pixijs leads on adoption by 415% (48,178 vs 9,350 stars). pixijs is written in TypeScript under MIT; c3 is written in JavaScript under MIT. pixijs has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, c3 15%. pixijs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-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
| pixijs | c3 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.1K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pixijs if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick c3 if
- You want the c3 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and c3 fits your workflow better
About pixijs
PixiJS is an open source 2D rendering library for the web, described in its README as the HTML5 Creation Engine. It ships WebGL and WebGPU renderers and is written in TypeScript, distributed under the MIT license from the pixijs/pixijs repository, which has been developed for fourteen years and holds roughly 48,000 stars across about 5,000 forks. The project lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem: it is installed through npm and driven from browser code, with GLSL shaders, canvas, canvas2d, and rendering engine listed among its topics. Its homepage is pixijs.com, and the repository carries the Data and …
read the full pixijs overview →
About c3
c3 is a D3 based reusable chart library that lets developers embed configurable, interactive SVG charts into web applications by describing each chart as a configuration object instead of writing D3 code directly.
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Frequently asked questions
Is pixijs or c3 more popular?
pixijs has 48,178 GitHub stars and c3 has 9,350. pixijs has the larger community by that measure.
Are pixijs and c3 free?
Both are open source. pixijs is licensed under MIT and c3 under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pixijs and c3?
pixijs is written in TypeScript and c3 in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pixijs or c3?
Choose pixijs if you want the larger community (48,178 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose c3 if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.