Comparing
The most powerful data visualization library for the web — bind data to SVG/Canvas elements and transform them with scales, axes, and layouts.
The professional-grade JavaScript animation library — animate anything (DOM, CSS, SVG, Canvas, WebGL) with a timeline-based API.
| Metric | d3 | gsap |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | npm | npm |
| Difficulty | Advanced | Intermediate ✓ |
| Weekly downloads | 5.0M↑ | 2.0M |
| Latest version | v7.9.0 | v3.12.7 |
| Recipes | 1 | 2↑ |
d3 only
Shared
gsap 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.
Marketing landing pages, scroll-driven storytelling, complex animation sequences, SVG/logo animations, parallax effects, or any animation that needs to be framework-agnostic.
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.
Simple React UI micro-interactions where framer-motion or CSS is simpler. GSAP's free tier doesn't include ScrollSmoother and some plugins commercially.
d3
gsap