Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GnuPlot VS ZingChart

Compare GnuPlot VS ZingChart and see what are their differences

GnuPlot logo GnuPlot

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility.

ZingChart logo ZingChart

ZingChart is a fast, modern, powerful JavaScript charting library for building animated, interactive charts and graphs. Bring on the big data!
  • GnuPlot Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-13
  • ZingChart Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-12

A pioneer in the world of data visualization, ZingChart is a powerful JavaScript library built with big data in mind. With more than 50 chart types and easy integration with your development stack, ZingChart allows you to create interactive and responsive charts with ease.

ZingChart

$ Details
freemium $99.0 / Annually (Website license for a single website or domain)
Platforms
Browser Windows iOS Android Mac OSX Linux Web Cross Platform JavaScript PHP Google Chrome Firefox Java iPhone Safari TypeScript
Release Date
2009 January

GnuPlot features and specs

  • Highly Customizable
    GnuPlot offers extensive customization options for creating plots, allowing users to tweak almost every aspect of the graph, including colors, labels, line styles, and more.
  • Scriptable
    GnuPlot can be driven by scripts, making it convenient for automating complex plots and integrating with other software workflows.
  • Wide Range of Output Formats
    It supports many output formats such as PNG, PDF, SVG, and EPS, making it easy to generate graphics for different purposes like presentations, publications, and web content.
  • Cross-Platform
    GnuPlot runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, ensuring that it can be used in diverse computing environments.
  • Complex Plotting Capabilities
    GnuPlot supports a wide variety of plots, including 2D and 3D plots, histograms, heatmaps, and more, which caters to the needs of advanced visualization requirements.
  • Performance
    GnuPlot is efficient and can handle large datasets with ease, offering fast rendering times which is crucial when dealing with complex visualizations.
  • Free and Open Source
    Being free and open-source software, GnuPlot is accessible to everyone, and users can modify the source code to suit their needs.

Possible disadvantages of GnuPlot

  • Steep Learning Curve
    GnuPlot has a complex syntax and a steep learning curve, especially for beginners who may find it difficult to get started without substantial effort.
  • Limited GUI
    GnuPlot lacks a full-featured graphical user interface (GUI), making it less user-friendly for those who prefer point-and-click interactions over scripting.
  • Documentation
    While comprehensive, the documentation can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate for new users trying to find specific information quickly.
  • Date Handling
    Handling and formatting dates can be cumbersome in GnuPlot, requiring more manual setup compared to other dedicated plotting tools.
  • Interactive Features
    GnuPlot's interactive plotting capabilities are limited compared to other modern plotting tools that offer more dynamic and real-time interactivity.
  • Integration
    Integration with some modern programming environments and languages may not be as seamless as with other plotting libraries specifically designed for those ecosystems (e.g., Matplotlib in Python).

ZingChart features and specs

  • Feature-Rich
    ZingChart offers a wide range of chart types and customization options, enabling developers to create detailed and highly interactive visualizations.
  • Performance
    Designed for high performance, ZingChart can handle large data sets efficiently, making it suitable for applications that require processing extensive information.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    The library supports multiple platforms, ensuring that charts render correctly across various devices and web browsers.
  • Ease of Use
    With extensive documentation and examples, as well as an intuitive API, ZingChart is accessible for developers at different skill levels.
  • Interactivity
    ZingChart provides numerous interactive features, such as tooltips, animations, and events, which enhance user engagement.
  • Community and Support
    There is a strong community and professional support available, offering assistance and resources for troubleshooting and improving your projects.

Analysis of GnuPlot

Overall verdict

  • Gnuplot is generally considered to be a good choice for those looking for a reliable and flexible plotting tool, especially if the users need robust scriptability or work across different operating systems.

Why this product is good

  • Gnuplot is a powerful, portable, and multi-platform tool capable of producing high-quality 2D and 3D plots. It supports numerous output formats and can be used interactively or in scripts. Additionally, it has a large support community and extensive documentation, making it accessible for both beginners and advanced users.

Recommended for

  • Scientists and engineers who need to visualize data across diverse platforms.
  • Users comfortable working with command-line interfaces.
  • Individuals or teams needing to generate plots through automated scripts.
  • Those looking for a free and open-source alternative to other graphing tools.

Analysis of ZingChart

Overall verdict

  • Overall, ZingChart is considered a good option for developers who need a powerful, versatile charting library. Its rich feature set, performance, and ease of use make it a popular choice among many professionals looking for robust data visualization solutions.

Why this product is good

  • ZingChart is a well-regarded charting library that supports a wide variety of chart types, including interactive and real-time data visualizations. It is known for its flexibility, extensive customization options, and ability to handle large datasets efficiently. Moreover, it provides cross-platform compatibility and responsive designs that adapt to different screen sizes, catering to diverse application needs.

Recommended for

    ZingChart is recommended for developers, data analysts, and businesses that require dynamic and responsive data visualization capabilities in their web applications. It is particularly well-suited for projects involving large datasets, real-time updates, or complex interactive visualizations.

GnuPlot videos

Gnuplot Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - DTrace Latency Visualization in gnuplot
  • Review - Basics of Gnuplot - Make your plot look Good

ZingChart videos

ZingChart Flash vs HTML5 Speed Test on Nexus One with Froyo

More videos:

  • Review - Learn Data Visualization with Zingchart

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GnuPlot and ZingChart)
Technical Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Charting Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Numerical Computation
100 100%
0% 0
Data Dashboard
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 GnuPlot and ZingChart

GnuPlot Reviews

We have no reviews of GnuPlot yet.
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ZingChart Reviews

  1. Sarah
    · Creative Director at ZingSoft ·
    Easy JSON configuration

    Straightforward JSON configuration, documentation & demos make it easy to get started with ZingChart without too much initial overhead, even for entry-level devs. For example, here's how to build an animated line chart in a minute.

    For those looking for more advanced features, ZingChart's API lets devs create interactions, leverage and interact with the chart autonomously, and allows for the extension of chart types. There are quite a few API demos available upon which to base new interactivity or functionality.

    Full disclosure: I work on the ZingSoft team, which includes ZingChart and ZingGrid 🖖🏽

    👍 Pros:    35+ built-in chart types|Mobile-friendly|Dependency-free|Highly customizable|Animation|Large datasets|Integrates with other frameworks
    👎 Cons:    Requires some development knowledge|Data needs to be in json format|Might be overkill for simple or static charts

15 JavaScript Libraries for Creating Beautiful Charts
ZingChart offers a flexible, interactive, fast, scalable and modern product for creating charts quickly. Their product is used by companies like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Boeing and Cisco, and uses Ajax, JSON, HTML5 to deliver great-looking charts quickly.
Top 10 JavaScript Charting Libraries for Every Data Visualization Need
ZingChart is a helpful tool for making interactive and responsive charts. This library is fast and flexible, and allows managing big data and generating charts with large amounts of data with ease.
Source: hackernoon.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GnuPlot seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 5 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.

GnuPlot mentions (5)

  • Question about Project Management
    To some extent it extends the concept of tasks which only can be reasonably executed after the completion of other ones (though results of branches eventually may join each other) and offers an additional assisting birds' eye visual of projects. So far, I'm aware about the documentation on worg interfacing org-taskjuggler and taskjuggler, as well as a video tutorial interfacing gnuplot instead. Source: about 2 years ago
  • How do I make a transparent background on .ps or .eps file imported to groff
    Gnuplot is a program to plot diagrams. The Commands issued to use it don't change regardless if it is used in Linux/Windows/MacOS and it comes with less dependencies than a Spread sheet, or a statistics program. This is why I started to Become comfortable with it, and venture out some of its features. Here, "conditional plot" referred to "the diagram only displays a Thing/uses a pixel if the value in the table... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Drawing graphs and diagrams
    Or, does drawing diagrams refers to plotting data, but neither using matplotlib, nor gnuplot (export to .svg, .pdf, .png; pstricks, tikz to mention a few options)? Source: over 2 years ago
  • Are specific softwares avialable that are suitable for converting different diagrams, graphs and mindmaps to latex codes?
    There may the occasion you actually need the data from a publication, and want to plot them altogether with data newly collected data in one diagram in common. An overlay, though possible, can become tricky (scaling, centering, alignment, etc.) and plotting all data in a diagram generated from scratch (gnuplot/octave, matplotlib, Origin, ...) exported as an illustration in the usual formats (.pdf/.png), or... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Introducing Graphs
    Have you looked at the graphing capabilities of Octave or Gnuplot? Gnuplot in particular has a lot of options, and a GUI for those who want it. Source: over 2 years ago

ZingChart mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of ZingChart yet. Tracking of ZingChart recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GnuPlot and ZingChart, you can also consider the following products

Matplotlib - matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces publication quality figures in a variety...

AnyChart - Award-winning JavaScript charting library & Qlik Sense extensions from a global leader in data visualization! Loved by thousands of happy customers, including over 75% of Fortune 500 companies & over half of the top 1000 software vendors worldwide.

GeoGebra - GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for learning and teaching.

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

SciDaVis - SciDAVis is a free application for Scientific Data Analysis and Visualization.

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.