Compare
Apache ECharts vs Highcharts
Apache ECharts is free and open source with a huge chart catalog; Highcharts is commercially licensed for anything but personal or non-commercial use.
Side by side
| Apache ECharts | Highcharts | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Apache Software Foundation | Highsoft AS | ||||||||
| Pricing model | Open source + paid options | Subscription | ||||||||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | ||||||||
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Self-hosted | ||||||||
| Open source | Yes (Apache-2.0) | No | ||||||||
| Best for | Teams building dashboards that need many chart types with less custom code than D3. | Enterprise and finance teams that want a commercially supported, mature charting library. | ||||||||
| Pricing | Free, open-source Apache project with no pricing page. Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site. | Free for non-commercial use; commercial use requires a per-developer annual or perpetual license, priced per product module.
Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget. | ||||||||
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Verdict
Both are JavaScript libraries with a large, ready-made catalog of chart types rather than low-level primitives — a genuine alternative to hand-building charts in D3 — but the licensing model is the deciding factor for most buyers. Apache ECharts is a top-level Apache Software Foundation project, free and open source under Apache-2.0, with no pricing page and no commercial restriction. Highcharts is free only for personal, educational, or non-commercial projects; any commercial deployment requires a paid per-developer license, sold annually or perpetually, with financial charting (Highcharts Stock) and mapping (Highcharts Maps) priced as separate add-on modules.
Feature-for-feature, both cover line, bar, scatter, and geographic chart types, and both render performantly on large datasets — ECharts through WebGL-backed rendering, Highcharts through general cross-browser and mobile optimization. Highcharts adds built-in accessibility features (keyboard navigation, screen-reader support) as a specifically called-out capability and ships a Python wrapper; ECharts is more commonly used directly or through community wrappers like pyecharts.
Choose Apache ECharts if
- Cost matters and your deployment is commercial — there's no license fee to budget for regardless of scale.
- You want geographic maps, sunburst, treemap, and other chart types in the same free package without add-on pricing.
- You're comfortable with Apache Foundation open-source governance rather than a single vendor's roadmap and support.
Choose Highcharts if
- You want a commercially supported product with a vendor accountable for the library working, and are willing to pay a per-developer license for that.
- Built-in accessibility compliance (keyboard nav, screen readers) is a stated requirement you don't want to build yourself.
- Financial or Gantt charting via a dedicated, vendor-maintained add-on module fits your use case.
The honest caveat
Neither library is straightforwardly "better" on features — the real trade is license cost and support versus zero license cost and community support. Confirm your actual use case against each license carefully before committing: Highcharts' non-commercial exception is genuinely free, but "non-commercial" is a narrower category than many teams assume, and a per-developer license adds up in a product built by more than a couple of engineers. See data visualization and dashboard.
Last reviewed September 22, 2026