head to head · open source
pixijs vs charts.css
pixijs has 48,178 GitHub stars, 5,071 forks, 344 open issues and last shipped yesterday. charts.css has 6,584 stars, 178 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. pixijs leads on adoption by 632% (48,178 vs 6,584 stars). pixijs is written in TypeScript under MIT; charts.css is written in HTML under MIT. pixijs has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, charts.css 3%. 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 | charts.css | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.1K | ⑂ 178 |
| 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 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 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 charts.css
Charts.css is an MIT licensed open source CSS framework that turns semantic HTML data tables into charts and graphs using nothing but CSS classes, aimed at frontend developers who want visualization without a JavaScript charting dependency.
read the full charts.css overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pixijs or charts.css more popular?
pixijs has 48,178 GitHub stars and charts.css has 6,584. pixijs has the larger community by that measure.
Are pixijs and charts.css free?
Both are open source. pixijs is licensed under MIT and charts.css under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pixijs and charts.css?
pixijs 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, pixijs or charts.css?
Choose pixijs if you want the larger community (48,178 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose charts.css if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.