Software Alternatives & Reviews

D3.js VS Observable

Compare D3.js VS Observable and see what are their differences

D3.js logo 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.

Observable logo Observable

Interactive code examples/posts
  • D3.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-11

D3 allows you to bind arbitrary data to a Document Object Model (DOM), and then apply data-driven transformations to the document. For example, you can use D3 to generate an HTML table from an array of numbers. Or, use the same data to create an interactive SVG bar chart with smooth transitions and interaction.

D3 is not a monolithic framework that seeks to provide every conceivable feature. Instead, D3 solves the crux of the problem: efficient manipulation of documents based on data. This avoids proprietary representation and affords extraordinary flexibility, exposing the full capabilities of web standards such as HTML, SVG, and CSS. With minimal overhead, D3 is extremely fast, supporting large datasets and dynamic behaviors for interaction and animation. D3’s functional style allows code reuse through a diverse collection of official and community-developed modules.

  • Observable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-09

D3.js videos

Data Visualization with D3.js - Full Tutorial Course

More videos:

  • Review - Let's learn D3.js - D3 for data visualization (full course)

Observable videos

Observable Overview

More videos:

  • Review - observablehq.com review observable hq data analysis
  • Review - Hands-on Data Visualization with Observable Plot

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to D3.js and Observable)
Charting Libraries
100 100%
0% 0
Data Visualization
57 57%
43% 43
Data Dashboard
66 66%
34% 34
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare D3.js and Observable

D3.js Reviews

6 JavaScript Charting Libraries for Powerful Data Visualizations in 2023
Depending on your requirements, the best JavaScript library is D3.js, as it’s by far the most customizable. However, it’s also really complex and difficult to master. Plus, it’s not as compatible with TypeScript as it is with JavaScript, which can be off-putting for some developers. If you’d prefer a less complex library that you can use with TypeScript, ECharts, and...
Source: embeddable.com
15 JavaScript Libraries for Creating Beautiful Charts
When we think of charting today, D3.js is the first name that comes up. Being an open source project, D3.js definitely brings many powerful features that were missing in most of the existing libraries. Features like dynamic properties, Enter and Exit, powerful transitions, and syntax familiarity with jQuery make it one the best JavaScript libraries for charting. Charts in...
Top 20 Javascript Libraries
D3 stands for Data-Driven Documents. With D3, you can apply data-driven transformations to DOM objects. The keyword with D3 is ‘data-driven,’ which means documents are manipulated depending on the data received. Data can be received in any format and bound with DOM objects. D3 is very fast and supports dynamic behavior for animation and interactions. There are plenty of...
Source: hackr.io
20+ JavaScript libraries to draw your own diagrams (2022 edition)
D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Right now, I would say is the most popular library of its kind.
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Another open source tool, D3.js is a JavaScript library for creating custom data visualizations in a web browser. Commonly known as D3, which stands for Data-Driven Documents, it uses web standards, such as HTML, Scalable Vector Graphics and CSS, instead of its own graphical vocabulary. D3's developers describe it as a dynamic and flexible tool that requires a minimum amount...

Observable Reviews

Top 10 Grafana Alternatives in 2024
Observable is a Grafana alternative that enables users to visualize data via charts and dashboards using code.
Source: middleware.io
Embedded analytics in B2B SaaS: A comparison
A few options were disregarded from the start due to a hefty price tag, these were Looker, Tableau, Power BI, GoodData. A few options like Trevor.io, Preset, Observable were disregarded as they did not seem to fit our criteria (based on the evaluation matrix).
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Observable should be more popular than D3.js. It has been mentiond 286 times since March 2021. 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.

D3.js mentions (159)

  • A visual guide to Vision Transformer – A scroll story
    Yes this was done with a combination of GSAP Scrolltrigger https://gsap.com/docs/v3/Plugins/ScrollTrigger/ and https://d3js.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 20 days ago
  • Full Stack Web Development Concept map
    d3 - very power visualization library enabling dynamic visualizations. docs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Observable 2.0, a static site generator for data apps
    Yep, Evidence is doing good work. We were most directly inspired by VitePress; we spent months rewriting both D3’s docs (https://d3js.org) and Observable Plot’s docs (https://observablehq.com/plot) in VitePress, and absolutely loved the experience. But we wanted a tool focused on data apps, dashboards, reports — observability and business intelligence use cases rather than documentation. Compared to Evidence, I’d... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • What is the technology stack used to create these live charts?
    They are images so it could be any number of things, datawrapper, charts.js, d3.js to name a few options. Source: 5 months ago
  • Animated map showing frequency and location of births around the world [OC]
    I made this interactive visualization that attempts to show the real-time frequency and location of births around the world. A country’s annual births (i.e. The country’s population times its birthrate) were distributed across all of the populated locations in each country, weighted by the population distribution (i.e. More populated areas got a greater fraction of the births). Data Sources and... Source: 5 months ago
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Observable mentions (286)

  • I'm writing a new vector search SQLite Extension
    Could this be implemented in Rust? Does that project (sqlite-loadable-rs) support WASM? https://observablehq.com/@asg017/introducing-sqlite-loadable-rs. - Source: Hacker News / 4 days ago
  • Show HN: An extension to track your Wikipedia adventures
    Have you tried out a tangled-tree visualization? [1] I've found it to be super useful when visualizing these sorts of relationships in a compact way. [1] https://observablehq.com/@nitaku/tangled-tree-visualization-ii. - Source: Hacker News / 4 days ago
  • A feature-rich front-end drag-and-drop component library
    Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I always stop and play around with the nested tree example when I come across Sortable. It works so flawlessly, and feels very tuned to mobile dnd. It even works to arrange (and reflow) inline spans in a paragraph! I have yet to come across this functionality in a text editor.. [0]: https://observablehq.com/@dleeftink/sortable-playground. - Source: Hacker News / 12 days ago
  • Parquet-WASM: Rust-based WebAssembly bindings to read and write Parquet data
    Arrow JS is just ArrayBuffers underneath. You do want to amortize some operations to avoid unnecessary conversions. I.e. Arrow JS stores strings as UTF-8, but native JS strings are UTF-16 I believe. Arrow is especially powerful across the WASM <--> JS boundary! In fact, I wrote a library to interpret Arrow from Wasm memory into JS without any copies [0]. (Motivating blog post [1]) [0]:... - Source: Hacker News / 14 days ago
  • A flat map with the least error possible: The Gott-Goldberg-Vanderbei projection
    Here’s the D3 implementation (which is just an interrupted azimuthal equidistant projection): https://observablehq.com/@d3/azimuthal-equidistant-hemispheres. - Source: Hacker News / 15 days ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing D3.js and Observable, you can also consider the following products

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

RunKit - RunKit notebooks are interactive javascript playgrounds connected to a complete node environment right in your browser. Every npm module pre-installed.

Plotly - Low-Code Data Apps

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

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

Vega-Lite - High-level grammar of interactive graphics