Comparing
The most powerful data visualization library for the web — bind data to SVG/Canvas elements and transform them with scales, axes, and layouts.
Production-ready animations and gestures for React — declarative, physics-based, with layout animations and exit transitions.
| Metric | d3 | framer-motion |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | npm | npm |
| Difficulty | Advanced | Intermediate ✓ |
| Weekly downloads | 5.0M | 7.0M↑ |
| Latest version | v7.9.0 | v12.6.2 |
| Recipes | 1 | 2↑ |
d3 only
Shared
framer-motion only
Custom visualizations that no library supports, journalism/scrollytelling data stories, network graphs, geo maps, animated transitions between data states, or when you need to own every detail.
React apps needing UI animations: page transitions, list reordering, drag-and-drop, hover effects, scroll-triggered reveals, and exit animations.
Standard bar/line/pie charts in a product (use Recharts or Chart.js — they're 10x faster to implement). d3's learning curve is steep.
Non-React projects, performance-critical animations running at 120fps with many particles (use CSS or WebGL), or very simple opacity/transform transitions where CSS is sufficient.
d3
framer-motion