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Add to SafariWhen comparing Raphael vs CanvasJS Charts, the Slant community recommends CanvasJS Charts for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript libraries for creating visualisations of data as charts/graphs?” CanvasJS Charts is ranked 5th while Raphael is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose CanvasJS Charts is:
Charts can render across devices including iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, Desktops, etc.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Works with older browsers
Because Raphael supports rendering VML + SVG, it is one of the few drawing libraries that is backwards compatible with older browsers that do not support canvas.
Pro Built in animations
Several built-in animations (such as ways of easing) are provided for you out of the box, but Raphael also allows cubic beziers for more complicated easing functions. Any drawing object property can be modified making it similar to css animations in jQuery.
Pro Every object is interactive with events
Everything that is drawn in Raphael is an object which means it is easy to manipulate any part of the rendered image after it is processed. It uses an event handler system for user inputs which makes it easy to learn for JavaScript developers used to event based libraries.
This style of handling objects makes Raphael a good fit for rendering interactive diagrams and charts that can also interact with other parts of the page.
Pro Easy creation of charts with extension
gRaphael is a Raphael extension to help you easily create graphs and charts.
Pro Works across devices and browsers
Charts can render across devices including iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, Desktops, etc.
Pro High performance
Charts can render tens of thousands of data points without any performance issues.
Pro Free for non-commercial use (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License)
Pro Start-up friendly
Offers discounted pricing for start-ups and new companies.
Pro Good commercial pricing
A single developer license for CanvasJS costs $299.
Pro Supports 24 different chart types
Supports 24 different chart types including line, column, bar, spline, area, pie, doughnut, stock charts, etc.
Cons
Con Complicated, confusing documentation
The documentation is often not clear and lacks practical examples.
Con Can be difficult to get support
Online communities for Raphael are small and inactive compared to other drawing libraries, and many issues opened on github are never addressed.
Con No drill-down
There is no drill-down possibilities built in.
Con Non-interactive
Charts lack interactivity features.
Con Cost for commercial use
