Comparing
The go-to plotting library for Python — create static, animated, and interactive visualizations with a MATLAB-like API.
Composable charting components for React — build line, bar, pie, and area charts from SVG with a declarative JSX API.
| Metric | matplotlib | recharts |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Python | npm |
| Difficulty | Intermediate | Beginner ✓ |
| Weekly downloads | 25.0M↑ | 3.2M |
| Latest version | v3.9.2 | v2.15.0 |
| Recipes | 3↑ | 1 |
matplotlib only
Shared
recharts only
Scientific plots, publication figures, embedding charts in reports, quick data exploration, custom visualizations that seaborn can't express, or when you need pixel-level control over a chart.
Dashboards, analytics pages, standard business charts in React apps, any time you want good-looking charts without a steep learning curve.
Interactive web dashboards (use Plotly or Bokeh), real-time streaming charts, or when you just want something beautiful fast (try seaborn first).
Custom/unusual visualizations (use d3), non-React projects (use Chart.js), performance-critical charts with 100k+ data points (Canvas-based charts are faster).
matplotlib
recharts