Data visualization apps & tools (2026): 28 tools ranked

Standalone applications and language-agnostic tools: desktop apps for exploring large graphs such as Gephi, web apps that turn spreadsheets into charts such as RAWGraphs, geospatial explorers such as Kepler.gl, and command-line tools such as Graphviz.

By GitHub stars, the most popular data visualization apps here are ChartDB (23K stars), FlameGraph (19.8K stars), and Data Formulator (17.5K stars). 16 of 28 had commits in the last 90 days.

Data visualization apps & tools, ranked by GitHub stars

1	ChartDB An Open-source tool to visualize database schemas and generate ER diagrams from a single query.	23K	116	6 months ago	AGPL-3.0
2	FlameGraph Inactive Stack trace visualizer that generates interactive SVG flame graphs from profiling data.	19.8K	0	2 years ago	–
3	Data Formulator AI-assisted tool for transforming data and creating visualizations, from Microsoft Research.	17.5K	930	2 months ago	MIT
4	Sampler Inactive Terminal dashboard that runs shell commands and visualizes their output, configured with YAML.	14.8K	0	4 years ago	GPL-3.0
5	QGIS Desktop geographic information system for viewing, editing, analyzing and mapping geospatial data.	14.5K	6,488	2 days ago	GPL-2.0
6	Gource Animated visualization of software version control history.	13.2K	3	7 months ago	GPL-3.0
7	Kepler.gl Geospatial analysis tool for large-scale data sets.	12K	402	today	MIT
8	VisiData Terminal spreadsheet multitool for exploring and arranging tabular data, with basic plotting.	9.3K	576	6 days ago	GPL-3.0
9	RAWGraphs Inactive Create web visualizations from CSV or Excel files.	9K	0	1.7 years ago	Apache-2.0
10	draw.io Client-side JavaScript editor for flowcharts, network, UML and other diagrams.	8.6K	65	yesterday	Apache-2.0
11	SandDance Visual data exploration and presentation with animated unit visualizations, from Microsoft Research.	7.1K	67	6 days ago	MIT
12	Gephi An open-source platform for visualizing and manipulating large graphs	6.7K	1,506	2 days ago	GPL-3.0
13	Spark Inactive Sparklines for the shell. It has several implementations in different languages.	6.1K	0	10 years ago	MIT
14	Orange Visual programming tool for data mining, machine learning and interactive data visualization.	5.7K	309	6 days ago	Other
15	RATH Automatic Exploratory Data Analysis & Data Visualization tool which is powered by an AI-assisted Augmented Analytics engine.	4.7K	29	2 months ago	AGPL-3.0
16	Charted Archived A charting tool that produces automatic, shareable charts from any data file.	2.7K	0	9 years ago	MIT
17	Graphviz Open source graph visualization command line tool and library. From input text to SVG,PDF,interactive web graph browser.	1.5K	–	today	EPL-2.0
18	DAC Dashboard-as-code tool that builds interactive dashboards from YAML and TSX definitions	779	279	3 days ago	AGPL-3.0
19	Cytoscape Desktop platform for network analysis and visualization, widely used in bioinformatics.	731	4	2 months ago	–
20	LabPlot KDE application for interactive scientific plotting, data analysis and visualization.	486	1,428	today	–
21	sankeydiagram.net Web app for creating and sharing Sankey diagrams of flows and budgets without code.	123	2	1 month ago	MIT + Commons Clause
22	Squey Visualization software for exploring and understanding large amounts of tabular data (using parallel coordinates, timeseries and scatter plots).	23	–	4 days ago	MIT
23	Resseract Lite Inactive A Data Analytics and Visualization Tool with flexible architecture to visualize and analyse data	7	0	2 years ago	Apache-2.0
24	ink-uplot Render uPlot charts in the terminal (React Ink) with truecolor Unicode and kitty/sixel/iTerm2 graphics.	1	81	4 days ago	MIT
25	csvtodashboard Turn a CSV or Excel file into an auto-built dashboard in the browser - client-side, no upload.	–	–	–	–
26	ERD Lab Free cloud based entity relationship diagram (ERD) tool made for developers.	–	–	–	–
27	gnuplot Command-line driven program for 2D and 3D plots, with many output formats.	–	–	–	–
28	Plotivy Scientific data visualization tool, with AI-generated reproducible Python code, and research-oriented design best practices built in.	–	–	–	–

Head-to-head comparisons

Related categories

Frequently asked questions

What is the most popular data visualization app?

By GitHub stars, ChartDB is the most popular, with 23K stars, followed by FlameGraph (19.8K) and Data Formulator (17.5K).

Which data visualization apps are actively maintained?

18 of the 28 tools listed had commits in the last 12 months, including ChartDB, Data Formulator, QGIS, Gource, and Kepler.gl. Each tool page shows monthly commit activity.

Are these data visualization apps free and open source?

19 of the 28 tools listed use an OSI-approved open-source license; the others are source-available, free to use, or use a custom license, so check each tool page. The most common license here is MIT.

Missing a tool? Add it with a one-line pull request to the README.