Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Plotly VS NVD3

Compare Plotly VS NVD3 and see what are their differences

Plotly logo Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps

NVD3 logo NVD3

This project is an attempt to build re-usable charts and chart components for d3.
  • Plotly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-31
  • NVD3 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-31

Plotly features and specs

  • Interactivity
    Plotly offers highly interactive plots that allow users to pan, zoom, and hover over data points for more information. This enhances the user experience and provides deeper insights.
  • High-quality visualizations
    It provides aesthetically pleasing and highly customizable charts, making it suitable for publication-quality visuals.
  • Versatility
    Plotly supports multiple chart types including line charts, scatter plots, bar charts, and 3D plots, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
  • Python integration
    Plotly is well-integrated with Python and works seamlessly with other popular data science libraries like Pandas, NumPy, and Scikit-learn.
  • Web-based
    The plots can be easily embedded in web applications or dashboards, making it ideal for sharing insights over the internet.
  • Open-source
    Plotly offers an open-source version, which allows users to create and share visualizations without any cost.

Possible disadvantages of Plotly

  • Performance
    Rendering very large datasets can sometimes be slow, which may not be suitable for real-time data visualization requirements.
  • Learning curve
    Even though the library is well-documented, the extensive range of features can have a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Cost for advanced features
    While the basic functionality is free, more advanced features, such as export to certain formats and additional customizable options, require a paid subscription.
  • Dependency management
    Plotly has a number of dependencies that need to be managed properly, which can sometimes complicate the setup process.
  • Complexity
    For simple visualizations, Plotly might be overkill and simpler libraries like Matplotlib or Seaborn could be more appropriate.

NVD3 features and specs

  • Reusable Charts
    NVD3 provides a variety of pre-built chart types that are easy to reuse and customize, saving developers time when creating standard visualization needs.
  • Based on D3.js
    Utilizing D3.js ensures a high level of flexibility and the ability to integrate complex data manipulations with aesthetic chart outputs.
  • Ease of Use
    NVD3 simplifies the process of generating complex visualizations by providing an intuitive API for interacting with D3.js charts.
  • Responsive Design
    Many of the chart components are designed with responsiveness in mind, allowing them to adjust to different screen sizes and devices.

Possible disadvantages of NVD3

  • Limited Updates
    NVD3 is not frequently updated, which may lead to compatibility issues or lack of support for newer web technologies.
  • Learning Curve
    While it simplifies some aspects of D3.js, users still need to have a solid understanding of D3.js to fully leverage NVD3's capabilities, which can be steep for new users.
  • Limited Customization
    Compared to directly using D3.js, NVD3 offers a more limited range of customization options for charts, potentially restricting designers looking for highly unique visualizations.
  • Documentation Quality
    The documentation for NVD3 can be sparse or outdated, making it harder for developers to troubleshoot issues or learn best practices.

Plotly videos

Create Real-time Chart with Javascript | Plotly.js Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Introducing plotly.py 3.0
  • Review - Is Plotly The Better Matplotlib?
  • Tutorial - Plotly Tutorial 2021
  • Review - Data Visualization as The First and Last Mile of Data Science Plotly Express and Dash | SciPy 2021

NVD3 videos

No NVD3 videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Plotly and NVD3)
Data Visualization
90 90%
10% 10
Charting Libraries
75 75%
25% 25
Data Dashboard
86 86%
14% 14
Business Intelligence
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 Plotly and NVD3

Plotly Reviews

Best 8 Redash Alternatives in 2023 [In Depth Guide]
Plotly is specifically designed for companies who want to build and deploy analytic applications like dashboards using Python, Julia, or R without needing DevOps or Javascript developers.
Source: www.datapad.io
5 Best Python Libraries For Data Visualization in 2023
Plotly is a web-based data visualization toolkit that comes with unique functionalities such as dendrograms, 3D charts, and also contour plots, which is not very common in other libraries. It has a great API offering scatter plots, line charts, bar charts, error bars, box plots, and other visualizations. Plotly can even be accessed from a Python Notebook.
Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization
Plotly is a free open-source graphing library that can be used to form data visualizations. Plotly (plotly.py) is built on top of the Plotly JavaScript library (plotly.js) and can be used to create web-based data visualizations that can be displayed in Jupyter notebooks or web applications using Dash or saved as individual HTML files. Plotly provides more than 40 unique...
5 top picks for JavaScript chart libraries
Plotly is a graphing library that’s available for various runtime environments, including the browser. It supports many kinds of charts and graphs that we can configure with a variety of options.

NVD3 Reviews

The Best Data Visualization Tools - Top 30 BI Software
This project is an attempt to build reusable charts and chart components for d3.js without taking away the power that d3.js gives you. The goal of the project is to keep all your charts neat and customizable. NVD3 is developed by the front end engineers at Novus Partners and uses their insight in charting technology.
Source: improvado.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Plotly seems to be a lot more popular than NVD3. While we know about 33 links to Plotly, we've tracked only 1 mention of NVD3. 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.

Plotly mentions (33)

  • Python for Data Visualization: Best Tools and Practices
    Plotly is perfect for interactive visualizations. You can create interactive charts and graphs that allow users to hover, click, and zoom in. Plotly is also great for web-based visuals, making it easy to share your findings online. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Generative AI Powered QnA & Visualization Chatbot
    Front End: A React application that leverages React-Chatbotify library to easily integrate a chatbot GUI. It also uses the Plotly library to display the charts/visualizations. The generative AI implementation and details are entirely abstracted from the front end. The front-end application depends on a single REST endpoint of the backend application. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Build a Stock Dashboard in less than 40 lines of Python code!🤓
    In this tutorial, Mariya Sha will guide you through building a stock value dashboard using Taipy, Plotly, and a dataset from Kaggle. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Essential Deep Learning Checklist: Best Practices Unveiled
    How to Accomplish: Utilize visualization libraries like Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Plotly in Python to create histograms, scatter plots, and bar charts. For image data, use tools that visualize images alongside their labels to check for labeling accuracy. For structured data, correlation matrices and pair plots can be highly informative. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Python equivalent to power bi/power query?
    For dashboards: - https://plotly.com/ is probably my favourite, but there are others like streamlit, voila and others... Source: over 1 year ago
View more

NVD3 mentions (1)

  • Widely Used Data Display and Analysis Libraries
    NVD3 is also on the list of the most popular libraries. Built upon D3.js like the others above, it does have a solid technical base. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Plotly and NVD3, you can also consider the following products

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.

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

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

ZoomCharts - Creating meaningful and aesthetically pleasing data visualizations and incorporating them into your projects is easy with the tools offered by ZoomCharts.

RAWGraphs - RAWGraphs is an open source app built with the goal of making the visualization of complex data...

Google Charts - Interactive charts for browsers and mobile devices.