Top roughViz Alternatives for Sketchy Chart Visualizations

roughViz.js is a fantastic JavaScript library for creating unique, hand-drawn styled charts in the browser. It's built on D3v5, roughjs, and handy, offering chart types like Bar, Horizontal Bar, Donut, Line, Pie, Scatter, and Stacked Bar. While roughViz excels at communicating intent over absolute precision with its fun, weird aesthetic, developers often seek out a roughViz alternative for various reasons – perhaps for specific frameworks, different drawing primitives, or more specialized features. This post will explore some of the best alternatives available.

Top roughViz Alternatives

If you're looking to achieve that delightful sketchy, hand-drawn chart style but need a different tool in your arsenal, these alternatives offer compelling solutions for various use cases and development environments.

Chart.xkcd

Chart.xkcd is a JavaScript chart library that specializes in plotting "sketchy," "cartoony," or "hand-drawn" styled charts, very much in the spirit of xkcd.com comics. It's an excellent roughViz alternative if your primary goal is to mimic that iconic webcomic style. It is Free, Open Source, and Self-Hosted, offering developer tools as its main features, making it highly customizable for your specific needs.

Rough.js

Rough.js is a lightweight (~8k), Canvas-based library that provides the core functionality to draw in a sketchy, hand-drawn-like style. Unlike roughViz which focuses on full chart types, Rough.js defines primitives to draw lines, curves, and other shapes, giving you more granular control over your custom visualizations. It's a Free, Open Source, and Self-Hosted solution, serving as a powerful underlying engine for creating custom sketchy graphics, making it a good roughViz alternative if you need to build from the ground up.

Rough Charts

Rough Charts is a responsive, composable React charting library that beautifully incorporates a hand-drawn style. If your project is built with React, this is an ideal roughViz alternative, as it offers seamless integration and leverages the React component model for building charts. It's Free, Open Source, Self-Hosted, and built specifically for React applications, providing robust charting features in a familiar framework.

Each of these roughViz alternatives offers unique advantages depending on your project's specific requirements, framework choices, and desired level of control. We encourage you to explore them to find the best fit for your next sketchy visualization project!