AwesomeDataviz

C++ visualization libraries & applications

Scientific, 3D and high-performance visualization. 14 tools, ranked by GitHub stars and updated .

Libraries and applications for scientific, 3D and high-performance visualization in C++. Many build on VTK, the Visualization Toolkit, which also powers ParaView. Most of these projects ship Python bindings, so they are often used from Python too.

By GitHub stars, the most popular C++ visualization tools here are ImPlot (6.2K stars), PlotJuggler (6.2K stars), and Matplot++ (4.9K stars). 11 of 14 had commits in the last 90 days.
1 ImPlot

Immediate-mode plotting library for Dear ImGui.

 6.2K 104 MIT
2 PlotJuggler

Open-source Qt5 application to plot charts (based on Qwt).

 6.2K 615 MPL-2.0
3 Matplot++

C++ graphics library for data visualization with a MATLAB-like API.

 4.9K 3 MIT
4 F3D

Cross-platform, fast, and minimalist 3D viewer with scientific visualization tools.

 4.7K 696 BSD-3-Clause
5 Mapnik

Toolkit for rendering maps, widely used to render OpenStreetMap tiles.

 4K 191 LGPL-2.1
6 ROOT

CERN framework for analyzing, storing and visualizing large scientific datasets.

 3.3K 4,406 Other
7 VTK

Open-source library for 3d Graphics, image processing and visualization.

 3.2K 5,558 BSD
8 MapLibre Native

Interactive vector tile map rendering for iOS, Android and other native platforms.

 2.3K 414 BSD-2-Clause
9 Polyscope

Viewer and user interface for 3D geometry processing.

 2.2K 61 MIT
10 ParaView

Multi-platform data analysis and visualization application based on VTK.

 1.7K 1,916 BSD-3-Clause
11 LargeVis Inactive

Implementation of the LargeVis paper, used to visualize large-scale and high-dimensional data.

 711 0 Apache-2.0
12 VisIt

Visualization and analysis tool for large mesh-based scientific data, developed at LLNL.

 532 353 BSD-3-Clause
13 TTK

Topological data analysis and visualization.

 481 480 BSD-3-Clause
14 QCustomPlot

Qt C++ widget for plotting and data visualization.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the most popular C++ visualization tool?

By GitHub stars, ImPlot is the most popular, with 6.2K stars, followed by PlotJuggler (6.2K) and Matplot++ (4.9K).

Which C++ visualization tools are actively maintained?

12 of the 14 tools listed had commits in the last 12 months, including ImPlot, PlotJuggler, Matplot++, F3D, and Mapnik. Each tool page shows monthly commit activity.

Are these C++ visualization tools free and open source?

12 of the 14 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 BSD-3-Clause.

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