A chart or a graph is a visual representation of data, in which “the data are represented by symbols, such as bars, lines, or slices”. These symbols can represent tabular numeric data, functions or some kinds of qualitative structures. For one reason or another, a lot of freelancers use Charts and Graphs to display the meaningful data visualizations. As a full-time freelancer and part-time geek, I really like to display my data analytics on pie charts and graphs too.

Nowadays, there are over hundred thousands of resources available on the web. Instead of spending time on researching for the ones you needed, we pick the top and intelligent ones for you. Below, you’ll find a collection of Essential Free Resources for Charts and Graphs Solution by which you can increase your productivity.

A chart can take a large variety of forms, however there are common features that provide the chart with its ability to extract meaning from data.

Typically a chart is graphical, containing very little text, since humans are generally able to infer meaning from pictures quicker than from text. One of the more important uses of text in a graph is in the title. A graph’s title usually appears above the main graphic and provides a succinct description of what the data in the graph refers to.

The data of a chart can appear in all manner of formats, with or without individual labels. It may appear as dots or shapes, connected or unconnected, and in any combination of colors and patterns. Inferences or points of interest can be overlayed directly on the graph to further aid information extraction.

When the data appearing in a chart contains multiple variables, the chart may include a legend. A legend contains a list of the variables appearing in the chart and an example of their appearance. This information allows the data from each variable to be identified in the chart.

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Free Resources for Charts and Graphs Solution

Realizing the increasing demand of useful apps across the web, we regularly feature commercial and free application on instantShift, so decided it was time to bring a roundup of highly essential solutions for charts and graphs to your attention. So, Let’s start with this compilation that every web developer, designer and freelancer should consider. Just keep in mind that this list isn’t a ranking list of charts and graphs solutions.

JavaScript Based Resources

CSS Based Resources

PHP/ASP Libraries Based Resources

Flash-Based Resources

Other Resources

JavaScript Based Free Resources

TufteGraph

TufteGraph is a JS library by which you can easily create graphs. All the configuration is by dynamic functions, allowing for a really compact API (very few options). Also, Non-core layout is done via CSS rather than code. You can customize the style of graph by editing it’s CSS.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Highcharts

Highcharts is a charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application. Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie and scatter chart types. It works in all modern browsers including the iPhone and Internet Explorer from version 6. Standard browsers use the Canvas element and in some cases SVG for the graphics rendering. In Internet Explorer graphics are drawn using VML.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

JS Charts

JS Charts is a JavaScript chart generator that requires little or no coding. JS Charts allows you to easily create charts in different templates like bar charts, pie charts or simple line graphs.

JS Charts is available free only for non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, get the full license for only $149. This license does NOT allow you to distribute, resell or embed/enclose JS Charts into another distribution pack/application which outputs similar content that can be used by third parties.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Protovis

Protovis composes custom views of data with simple marks such as bars and dots. Unlike low-level graphics libraries that quickly become tedious for visualization, Protovis defines marks through dynamic properties that encode data, allowing inheritance, scales and layouts to simplify construction.

Protovis is free and open-source, provided under the BSD License. It uses JavaScript and SVG for web-native visualizations; no plugin required (though you will need a modern web browser)! Although programming experience is helpful, Protovis is mostly declarative and designed to be learned by example.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

MilkChart

MilkChart is a simple to use, yet robust library for transforming table data into a chart. This library uses the HTML5 <canvas> tag and is only supported on browsers other than IE until ExCanvas gets proper text support.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Plotkit

PlotKit is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for Javascript. It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support. PlotKit is fully documented and there is a quick tutorial to get you started. PlotKit is a complete rewrite of CanvasGraph. It is better structured and supported.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

gRaphaël (JavaScript Library)

gRaphaël’s goal is to help you create stunning charts on your website. It is based on Raphaël graphics library. Check out the demos to see static and interactive charts in action. gRaphaël currently supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

Official Link Top ↑

Visualize

Accessible data visualization in HTML has always been tricky to achieve, particularly because elements such as images allow only the most basic features for providing textual information to non-visual users. Visualize uses a technique which use JavaScript to scrape data from an HTML table and generate charts using the HTML 5 Canvas element. The technique is particularly useful because the data for the visualization already exists in the page in structured tabular format, making it accessible to people who browse the web with a screen reader or other assistive technology.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Flot

Flot is a pure Javascript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side. The focus is on simple usage (all settings are optional), attractive looks and interactive features like zooming and mouse tracking.

The plugin works with Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2.x+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Konqueror 4.x+ with the HTML canvas tag (the excanvas Javascript emulation helper is used for IE).

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

API Google Chart

The Google Chart Tools enable adding live charts to any web page. It have a rich gallery of visualizations provided as Image charts (using a simple URL request to a Google chart server), Interactive charts (using a Google developed JavaScript library). it can read live data from a variety of data sources and it’s very simple to use.

Official Link Top ↑

Moochart

moochart is a plugin for MooTools 1.2 that draws bubble diagrams on the canvas tag. Future versions might include pie, bar & line graphs. You can find all the other info like download details and demo on it’s single page.

Official Link Top ↑

InfoVis

The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web. It provides you facility to combined the visualizations in order to create new visualization methods. All visualization classes are mutable, so you can easily add/override any method you want.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Canvas 3D Graph

Canvas 3D Graph is a special type of bar graph that plot numbers in 3D. This first started as PHP-GD project, but soon I realized that there is not much sense in generating complex graph like this on server side (script worked really fast, though). All the other details can be found on information page itself.

Official Link Top ↑

Dygraphs JavaScript Visualization Library

dygraphs is an open source JavaScript library that produces produces interactive, zoomable charts of time series. It is designed to display dense data sets and enable users to explore and interpret them. It’s feature includes, Plots time series without using an external server or Flash, Works in Internet Explorer (using excanvas), Lightweight (45kb) and responsive, Displays values on mouseover (this makes it easily discoverable), Supports error bands around data series, Interactive zoom, Adjustable averaging period, Can intelligently chart fractions, Customizable click-through actions etc.

Official Link Top ↑

Flotr Javascript Plotting Library

Flotr is a javascript plotting library based on the Prototype Javascript Framework and inspired by Flot (written by Ole Laursen). Flotr enables you to draw appealing graphs in most modern browsers with an easy to learn syntax. It comes with great features like legend support, negative value support, mouse tracking, selection support, zoom support, event hooks, CSS styling support and much more.

Official Link Top ↑

JavaScript Diagram Builder

The JavaScript Diagram Builder v. 3.3 is a library of some objects and functions, which can help you to display a coordinate diagram (resp. a chart or graph) in your webpage in an easy way. The file ‘diagram.js’ contains all the necessary objects and functions. This file must be included in the header of your webpage:

<script Language="JavaScript" src="diagram.js"></script>

The script will best work with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x, Netscape 6.x, Opera 7.x or Konqueror 3.x under Windows and Linux, but it will also work with Netscape 4.x and Opera 5.x under Windows and Linux with some restrictions.

The JavaScript Diagram Builder is especially useful, if you want to display a coordinate diagram (chart or graph) which depends on the client’s input parameter or from data of a database.

Official Link Download Page Link Top ↑

Grafico: Javascript Charting Library

Grafico is a javascript charting library built with Raphaël and Prototype.js. The library provides a wide array of graphs and stays with the guidelines laid out by Stephen Few and Edward Tufte. Grafico provides pretty charts that effectively communicate their information. This means you get awesome graphs such as stacked area charts and sparklines, but no pie charts or bar charts with every bar a different color. There are a lot of bad charts out there, and Grafico will do it’s best to prevent you from adding charts onto that pile.

Official Link Top ↑

MooWheel

The purpose of this script is to provide a unique and elegant way to visualize data using Javascript and the <canvas> object. This type of visualization can be used to display connections between many different objects, be them people, places, things, or otherwise. The script is licensed under an MIT-style license. All other info can be found on MooWheel description page itself.

Official Link Live Examples Top ↑

MooCSSChart

mooCSSChart is a very easy way to creat charts using JavaScript and quick CSS.

Official Link Top ↑

Processing.js

Processing.js is an open programming language for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions for the web without using Flash or Java applets. Processing.js uses Javascript to draw shapes and manipulate images on the HTML5 Canvas element. The code is light-weight, simple to learn and makes an ideal tool for visualizing data, creating user-interfaces and developing web-based games.

Processing.js is explicitly developed for browsers that support the HTML5 <canvas> element. Processing.js runs in FireFox, Safari, Opera and Chrome but will not be supported in Internet Explorer.

Official Link Download Page Link Top ↑

JSXGraph

JSXGraph is a cross-browser library for interactive geometry, function plotting, charting, and data visualization in a web browser. It is implemented completely in JavaScript, does not rely on any other library, and uses SVG and VML. JSXGraph is easy to embed and has a small footprint: less than 100 KByte if embedded in a web page. No plug-ins are required! Special care has been taken to optimize the performance.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

jQuery Sparklines

This jQuery plugin generates sparklines (small inline charts) directly in the browser using data supplied either inline in the HTML, or via javascript. The plugin is compatible with most modern browsers and has been tested with Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, Opera 9, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8. Each example displayed below takes just 1 line of HTML or javascript to generate.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

JavaScript Chart

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to add a stylish and colorful chart to your Web page with minimal effort and still avoid slow-loading Java applets or server side generated images? Then the JavaScript Chart is just what you need!

The JavaScript Chart supports:

• Several charts on the same page
• No limit on the number of data items in one chart (as long as you have enough space)
• Pass the chart data as a string in the following format: Item A;1;Item B;2;Item C;3.
• Gridlines are automatically created and spaced with appropriate increments depending on the highest value in the data range
• Choose if item values should be displayed or not on each individual chart
• Choose if the chart legend should be displayed or not
• Each data item will automatically get a different matching color
• Each chart can be rendered in debug mode, showing some useful information if the chart is not displayed as expected
• Modification of some of the layout parameters with CSS

This small utility will simply take a semi-colon delimited data string (the delimiter can be changed) and generate a chart for you. You can add several charts to the same page and there is no limit to how many data items you can have in one chart, just as long as you have enough space in your page.

Official Link Top ↑

Bluff

Bluff is a JavaScript port of the Gruff graphing library for Ruby. It is designed to support all the features of Gruff with minimal dependencies; the only third-party scripts you need to run it are a copy of JS.Class (2.6kB gzipped) and a copy of Google’s ExCanvas to support canvas in Internet Explorer. Both these scripts are supplied with the Bluff download. Bluff itself is around 11kB gzipped.

To draw a graph, you create a new Bluff graph object using the id of a canvas element on the page, set some options, add the data and labels, then tell the graph to draw.

Official Link Download Page Link Top ↑

TableDiagram

TableDiagram script generates a diagram (chart) view of the data in a table. The values in the table must be non-negative (more than or equal to 0). They can be either integer or decimal.

Official Link Download Page Link Top ↑

HTML-Graphs

Anyone easily can use this script to create horizontal / vertical bar graphs, progress bars and faders. You can create simple graphs and even grouped bar graphs with legends, add labels, change colors etc. No graphics or graphical libraries required.

This script was tested with all the major systems and browsers

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

CSS Based Free Resources

Pie Graph

This is a purely DHTML/ CSS based Pie Graph script. It loads fast and blends in with the rest of the page. It’s very easy to customize and very easy to use. You can even use a transparent background for it!

Official Link Top ↑

Css Data Chart

Data visualization is mostly achieved with flash applications or with help of some programming languages. In this example you can learn how to creat data chart only using well formed markup and css. There is no need to use any JavaScript or any backend application. Of course, the markup could be generated programatically or by hand, whatever works best for you.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

CSS Stacked Bar Graphs

To design the stats feature of Backbone, our Ruby on Rails CMS, we needed to show a stacked bar graph of page views vs unique visitors. There are plenty of CSS bar graph interpretations, but none of them did stacked bar graphs. So here you can learn how to creat CSS Stacked Bar Graphs Based off Alen Grakalic’s Pure CSS Data Chart.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

AjaxMGraph

It’s very simple graph built in CSS to represent data. AjaxMGraph is a user interactive XHTML/CSS graph which is powered by PHP and using Ajax based graphing library built on the Prototype JavaScript framework.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

CSS Bar Graphs

Having a working knowledge of XHTML and CSS when developing applications is a big help in knowing what can be done client-side and what should be generated server-side. The concept of creating CSS Bar Graphs is simple, utilize the percentage width abilities of CSS to accurately portray a percentage bar graph.

Official Link Top ↑

List Bar Chart

List Bar Chart are nothing more than a styled definition list with just classes defining each line. It’s very simple CSS mathod by which anyone can simply able to creat list bar charts. You may use this method on your personal ‘non-profit’ web site without seeking author’s permission.

Official Link Top ↑

Simple Accessible Charts

SAC (Simple Accessible Charts) are created from a list using CSS. It’s benefit includes: Fully searchable by search engines, Accessible, Scalable, Easy to expand, a more complete listing, and use of Only HTML and CSS.

Official Link Top ↑

Dynamic Pie Chart

This is very easy way of creating a semi-dynamic pie chart without the use of server-side imaging libraries.

Official Link Top ↑

Chart Demo

In web applications developed now days a lot of the logic that previously resided on the server side is now being implemented on the client side. This is especially true for information presentation, components such as trees and columnlist makes it possible for users to interact with the application, or web site if you wish, without contacting the server. However the ability to present data in a graphic rather than textual format has been quite limited, unless a plugin is used or an image is requested from the server. That’s where this component comes in to place, it allows various forms of charts to be created, without any additional plugin, and without using images.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Vertical Bar Graphs with CSS and PHP

Who wants to use Excel to make a new graph each week? Using CSS and PHP you can create attractive bar graphs (yes, even the stacked kind) that are always up to date.

Official Link Top ↑

Accessible Bar Chart

This is one more simple solution using CSS. It’s main feature includs:

• Table headers are there but hidden using the aural text class discussed in a previous article. Sighted users have already received information on what the chart is about.
• A bar is created using an image which is stretched to the appropriate size.
• Bar widths are calculated relative to the largest value.
• Value cells have a repeated background image which shows the vertical lines.
• Browsing the chart without CSS or images will render an ordinary table.
• Value labels can be hidden by using the aural text class.

Official Link Top ↑

PHP/ASP Libraries Based Free Resources

pChart (PHP Charts)

pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Most of todays chart libraries have a cost, our project is intended to be free. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. This project is still under development and new features or fix are made every week.

Focus has been put on rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm to draw eye candy graphics. Rendering speed has been dramatically enhanced since the first version, we’ll still continue optimising the code!

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Visifire (Silverlight & WPF Charts)

Visifire is a set of open source data visualization controls – powered by Microsoft® Silverlight™ & WPF. Visifire is a multi-targeting control which can be used in both WPF & Silverlight applications. Using the same API, charts in both Silverlight & WPF environments can be created within minutes. Visifire Silverlight Controls can also be embedded in any webpage as a standalone Silverlight App. Visifire is independent of server side technology. It can be used with ASP, ASP.Net, SharePoint, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby or just simple HTML.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

jqPlot

jqPlot is a plotting and charting plugin for the jQuery Javascript framework. jqPlot produces beautiful line, bar and pie charts with many features:

• Numerous chart style options.
• Date axes with customizable formatting.
• Up to 9 Y axes.
• Rotated axis text.
• Automatic trend line computation.
• Tooltips and data point highlighting.
• Sensible defaults for ease of use.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Libchart

Libchart is a free chart creation PHP library, that is easy to use. Main festure includes:

• Bar charts (horizontal or vertical).
• Line charts.
• Pie charts.
• Single or multiple data sets.
• Compatibility with PHP 5.
• Easy to study how it works and adapt to your needs.
• No external dependency, need only PHP compiled with GD and FreeType.

Official Link Download Page Link Top ↑

JpGraph

JpGraph is a Object-Oriented Graph creating library for PHP >= 5.1 The library is completely written in PHP and ready to be used in any PHP scripts (both CGI/APXS/CLI versions of PHP are supported).

The library can be used to create numerous types of graphs either on-line or written to a file. JpGraph makes it easy to draw both “quick and dirty” graphs with a minimum of code as well as complex graphs which requires a very fine grained control. The library assigns context sensitive default values for most of the parameters which minimizes the learning curve. The features are there when you need them – not as an obstacle to overcome!

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

.netCHARTING

.netCHARTING combines visually stunning graphics and a comprehensive interface to bring you one of the most compelling charting solutions available for any platform.

.netCHARTING utilizes the .NET framework and GDI+ providing a managed charting solution for C# and VB.NET developers working with ASP.NET or WinForms. Using the latest Microsoft technologies has enabled us to step beyond existing visual charting standards and produce visuals much stronger than typical dynamic charting solutions. In fact, we hope you will agree that the .netCHARTING visuals are even superior to high end desktop charting applications!

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Image Graph

Image_Graph is, as is indicated by the title, a project to create graphs. It utilizes PHP’s object oriented model, to simple but very customizable enable a user/developer to create highly versatile graphs.

Image_Graph has many features, here are mentioned but a few of them:

• 14 different chart types
• 3 different layout for each chart type (normal, stacked or stacked summarizing 100%)
• 5 types of data source
• Driver based to support multiple formats (JPEG, PNG, SVG, PDF and initial support for SWF)
• Many charts or coordinate systems displayed in the same graph
• Every line, every color, every font can be customized
• Easy-to-use API, through thoroughly designed ‘natural’ object oriented framework
• PEAR package – governing for quality and standardization
• Java style layout of multiple plots
• Line/area-smoothing using Bezier curves
• PHP5 support

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Flash Based Free Resources

FusionCharts

FusionCharts Free is a completely free and open-source Flash charting component. It empowers you to create animated and interactive Flash charts for your web applications, desktop applications and presentations. No matter which script or database you are using, even if it is simple HTML, you can take care of all your basic charting needs with FusionCharts Free.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

XML/SWF Charts

XML/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful tool to create attractive charts and graphs from XML data.

Create an XML source to describe a chart, then pass it to this tool’s flash file to generate the chart. The XML source can be prepared manually, or generated dynamically using any scripting language (PHP, ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.)

XML/SWF Charts makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation, and Flash provides the best graphic quality.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

amcharts (Free Version)

mCharts is a set of Flash charts for your websites and Web-based products. AmCharts can extract data from simple CSV or XML files, or they can read dynamic data generated with PHP, .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, Perl, ColdFusion, and many other programming languages.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Open Flash Chart

Open Flash Chart is a collection of Flash applets that you embed in your web page, and which fetch data from the web server to display. At the time of writing, Version 1 lets you create various types of bar chart, line chart and pie chart. Version 2, introduces more sophisticated graph types such as stacked bars. In both cases you get nice little refinements as well as animated pie charts, and with a little fiddling you can customise the way your graph appears by changing its colours, fonts and size. And Open Flash Chart is British, so you’re not only encouraging open source but British open source.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

AnyChart

AnyChart is a flexible Flash based charting solution.

AnyChart enables any organization to add cross-browser and cross-platform interactive Flash charts, dashboards, graphs and maps to their applications.
Using AnyChart, our customers are able to maximize the value of their applications by easily adding data visualization tools that:

• Enable better analysis and decision making by allowing comprehensive and free-flowing data exploration. This provides the ability to spot patterns and trends.
• Increase customer satisfaction by enhancing the look of any application, report, or presentation.
• Lower developments costs and speed time-to market.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Rich Chart

Rich Chart Server generates captivating dynamic Flash charts from ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications. Use the included authoring tool to visually design a rich chart template which can include stunning animation effects, audio narration, text and image elements, links and tooltips, and any other type of visual customization. Apply the chart template to any available .NET data source or XML document to generate an interactive Flash chart with drill-downs, enabling sophisticated data navigation between multiple charts.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Swiff Chart

Swiff Chart Generator is the server-side solution to dynamically serve eye-catching animated charts from ASP.NET forms, PHP scripts or JSP scripts. Query data from a database, apply your own style template created with the Swiff Chart authoring tool and instantly generates high-impact charts in Adobe Flash format, PNG/JPG format, SVG format and PDF format.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

Other Free Resources

JFreeChart (Java chart library)

JFreeChart is a free Java chart library. It supports pie charts (2D and 3D), bar charts (horizontal and vertical, regular and stacked), line charts, scatter plots, time series charts, high-low-open-close charts, candlestick plots, Gantt charts, combined plots, thermometers, dials and more. JFreeChart can be used in applications, applets, servlets and JSP.

Official Link Live Examples Download Page Link Top ↑

ProtoChart

ProtoChart is a new opensource library using Prototype and Canvas to create good looking charts. This library is highly motivated by Flot, Flotr and PlotKit libraries. It’s Feature includes:

• Line, bar, pie, curve, mix, and area charts available
• Multiple data series on same graph
• Highly customizable legend support
• Customizable grid, grid border, background
• Customizable axis-tick values (both x and y)
• Supports: IE6/7, FF2/3 and Safari
• Even works on an iPhone!

Official Link Download Page Link Top ↑

Find Something Missing?

While compiling this list, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great chart or graph solutions. Feel free to share it with us.