Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

CodePen VS Google Charts

Compare CodePen VS Google Charts and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Google Charts logo Google Charts

Interactive charts for browsers and mobile devices.
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Google Charts Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-10

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Google Charts features and specs

  • Easy Integration
    Google Charts can be easily integrated with web applications by adding a simple script tag and using JavaScript for customization.
  • Wide Variety of Chart Types
    Google Charts supports a wide range of chart types including line charts, bar charts, pie charts, and more, allowing for comprehensive data visualization.
  • Dynamic Data Handling
    The library allows for dynamic data handling and real-time updates, enabling interactive and responsive charts.
  • Cross-Browser Compatibility
    Google Charts is compatible with most modern browsers, ensuring a consistent experience across different platforms.
  • Customizable
    Offers extensive customization options such as modifying colors, labels, and tooltips, which allows developers to tailor visualizations to their specific needs.
  • Free to Use
    Google Charts is free to use, making it an appealing choice for developers looking for cost-effective data visualization solutions.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Provides extensive documentation and tutorials, which helps developers to quickly get started and resolve issues efficiently.

Possible disadvantages of Google Charts

  • Dependency on Google
    Requires an internet connection to fetch the Google Charts library, and performance can be affected if there are connectivity issues.
  • Limited Customization Compared to Alternatives
    Though customizable, it has fewer options and flexibility compared to other libraries like D3.js, which might be a limitation for advanced users.
  • Load Time
    The initial loading time of Google Charts can be slower compared to lightweight charting libraries due to the need to retrieve data from Google's servers.
  • Security Concerns
    As it relies on loading scripts from Google's servers, there might be security concerns in highly sensitive applications.
  • Not Open Source
    Google Charts is not open source, which might be a barrier for developers who prefer open-source solutions for greater control and transparency.
  • Limited Offline Support
    Static charts cannot be easily generated without an internet connection, limiting its use in offline applications.

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Google Charts videos

Data Visualization for the Web Using Google Charts

More videos:

  • Review - Incorporating Google Charts in a FileMaker Solution | FileMaker Training
  • Review - Google Charts for Native Android Apps

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Google Charts)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Data Dashboard
0 0%
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
Data Visualization
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Google Charts

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

Google Charts Reviews

15 JavaScript Libraries for Creating Beautiful Charts
Google Charts also comes with various customization options that help in changing the look of the graph. Charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG to provide cross-browser compatibility and cross-platform portability to iPhones, iPads, and Android. It also includes VML for supporting older IE versions.
Top 10 JavaScript Charting Libraries for Every Data Visualization Need
Google Charts is an excellent choice for projects that do not require complicated customization and prefer simplicity and stability.
Source: hackernoon.com
A Complete Overview of the Best Data Visualization Tools
Google Charts is a powerful, free data visualization tool that is specifically for creating interactive charts for embedding online. It works with dynamic data and the outputs are based purely on HTML5 and SVG, so they work in browsers without the use of additional plugins. Data sources include Google Spreadsheets, Google Fusion Tables, Salesforce, and other SQL databases.
Source: www.toptal.com
The Best Data Visualization Tools - Top 30 BI Software
Google Charts runs on SVG and HTML5, aiming for Android, iOS and total cross-browser compatibility, including older versions of Internet Explorer. All of the charts you can create are interactive and you may be able zoom in on some of them. The site offers a fairly comprehensive gallery where you can find a variety of types of visualizations and interactions that you can use.
Source: improvado.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen seems to be a lot more popular than Google Charts. While we know about 503 links to CodePen, we've tracked only 10 mentions of Google Charts. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

View more

Google Charts mentions (10)

  • The top 11 React chart libraries for data visualization
    This library leverages the robustness of Google’s chart tools combined with a React-friendly experience. It is ideal for developers familiar with Google’s visualization ecosystem. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Using Images in a chart?
    I tried adding the images as labels and it didn't work. If this is possible at all, it would probably require Google Charts. Source: about 2 years ago
  • What are some good graph visualization libraries?
    Google's is a bit simpler to work with but more basic in terms of features https://developers.google.com/chart. Source: over 2 years ago
  • 5 Best Free JS Chart Libraries
    Google charts Https://developers.google.com/chart. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Suggestions for super simple QR code generator
    I did find a nice solution for Access forms where you can use a web browser control and developers.google.com/chart to render a QR code in that control based on the contents of other controls (textboxes, comboboxes, etc.,.). This would be perfect if it didn't a) rely on an active WAN connection and b) rely on that specific URL being active indefinitely. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Google Charts, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

Highcharts - A charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

D3.js - D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Chart.js - Easy, object oriented client side graphs for designers and developers.