head to head · open source
pixijs vs deck.gl
pixijs has 48,179 GitHub stars, 5,071 forks, 344 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deck.gl has 14,597 stars, 2,267 forks, 532 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pixijs leads on adoption by 230% (48,179 vs 14,597 stars). pixijs is written in TypeScript under MIT; deck.gl is written in TypeScript under MIT. pixijs has attracted 11% 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 2 topic tags (data-visualization, 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
| pixijs | deck.gl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.1K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 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 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 deck.gl
deck.gl is an MIT licensed, WebGL2 and WebGPU powered visualization framework that renders large scale geospatial and data driven layers in the browser, built for JavaScript, TypeScript and Python developers who need high performance maps and custom visualizations without writing their own GPU rendering code.
read the full deck.gl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pixijs or deck.gl more popular?
pixijs has 48,179 GitHub stars and deck.gl has 14,597. pixijs has the larger community by that measure.
Are pixijs and deck.gl free?
Both are open source. pixijs is licensed under MIT and deck.gl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pixijs and deck.gl?
pixijs 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, pixijs or deck.gl?
Choose pixijs if you want the larger community (48,179 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose deck.gl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.