Hue Draw

Why teams choose Hue Charts.

Hue Charts beside ten other libraries: cost, support, where each runs, what you can stand behind, and how much data it draws.

The decision

The short answer, before the evidence.

  • Where it wins

    The same chart everywhere, nothing else to install, and built for accessibility law: read beside ten other libraries.

    See the comparison

  • What it costs

    Free to use; a whole organisation's plan is £1,000 a year or £100 a month, with no seats.

    See pricing

  • Who it is for

    Reports someone must stand behind, products under accessibility law, and teams that review every dependency.

    See the questions buyers ask

Side by side

Eleven chart libraries, the same questions.

Fifteen questions in five tables, each answer from its vendor's own pages. A mark is what each library offers; a lighter one, a part of it or an add-on; an empty one, none.
What it costs
LibraryTo startTen developers, year oneFree to use
Hue Chartshue-charts 1.0.0Free, every everyday chart£1,000, a Business plan for the whole organisationEvery everyday chart, for any use, with its credit
Highchartshighcharts 13.1.1$366 a developer a yearQuoted; $3,660 by seat, Core alonePersonal and education only
amCharts 5@amcharts/amcharts5 5.21.3Free with its logo; $80 a seat a year$2,800 by its $280 SaaS seatEvery feature, its logo shown
Apache EChartsecharts 6.1.0Free · Apache 2.0$0Everything, commercial use
Chart.jschart.js 4.5.1Free · MIT$0Everything, commercial use
Plotly.jsplotly.js 4.1.2Free · MIT$0Everything, commercial use
D3.jsd3 7.9.0Free · ISC$0Everything, commercial use
AG Chartsag-charts-community 14.2.0Community free · Enterprise $499 a developer$4,990 by seatCommunity, in production
SciChart.jsscichart 6.0.13$1,349.66 a developer, a year's term$13,497 by seatNon-commercial, watermarked
LightningChart JS@lightningchart/lcjs 9.0.0From $2,750 a developerQuoted; $27,500 by seatNon-commercial; a 30-day trial
Vega-Litevega-lite 6.5.0Free · BSD-3$0Everything, commercial use
Support you can hold them to
LibraryPaid supportA written response time
Hue ChartsWith a Business or Enterprise plan4 business hours on Enterprise for a critical fault, fixed in 7 days
HighchartsIncluded36 hours, Norwegian working days
amCharts 5$190 a seat a yearNone: an internal 24-hour goal
Apache EChartsNone from the projectNone stated
Chart.jsNone: community keptNone
Plotly.jsNone for plotly.jsNone for plotly.js
D3.jsNone statedNone stated
AG ChartsEnterprise, by ticketThe next business day, best efforts
SciChart.jsWithin a one- to three-year termAn aim of one business day
LightningChart JSFour tickets a yearNone stated
Vega-LiteNone: community keptNone
Where it runs
LibraryOn a server, no browserPower BIPDFAI assistants (MCP)
Hue ChartsPNG, SVG and PDF, the same bytesIts own visual, 29 charts; not yet in AppSourceTagged to PDF/UA-1; PDF/X-4 for printIts own, in the package, offline
HighchartsAn export server on a headless browserNone in AppSourceBy add-ons; tagging not statedOfficial, hosted
amCharts 5Not stated; its guide drives a browserNone in AppSourceThe chart as a picture in a PDFOfficial, hosted
Apache EChartsSVG with no dependencies; PNG by node-canvasA third party's, uncertifiedNo PDF; PNG, JPEG or SVGA reference example
Chart.jsThrough node-canvasNone in AppSourceNo PDF; PNG or JPEGCommunity servers only
Plotly.jsNeeds Chrome (Kaleido)A third party's, certifiedNo PDF; PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVGFor Dash, not plotly.js
D3.jsPath strings, no pictureA third party's, uncertifiedNo exportCommunity servers only
AG ChartsEnterprise only: PNG, JPEGNone in AppSourceNo PDF; PNG or JPEGOfficial, written for AG Grid
SciChart.jsNot statedNone in AppSourceNot statedIn testing, for customers
LightningChart JSThrough lcjs-headless (MIT; it needs an lcjs licence)None in AppSourceNo PDF; pictures into PDFKitOfficial
Vega-LiteSVG; PNG and PDF by node-canvasDeneb, a third party's, certifiedBy its command line; tagging not statedNone official
What you can stand behind
LibraryThe same picture everywhereAccessibilityDependencies and SBOMSecurity policy
Hue ChartsByte for byte, with a digestWCAG 2.2 AA report; keyboard, screen readerNone; CycloneDX and SPDX SBOMsA SECURITY.md in the package, and a written clock
HighchartsNot statedACR, WCAG 2.1 AA; keyboard, screen readerNone; no SBOM statedSECURITY.md
amCharts 5Not statedACR, WCAG 2.0 AA; keyboard, screen reader25; no SBOMSECURITY.md
Apache EChartsNot statedOpt-in ARIA; no keyboard; no report2; no SBOMApache's security page
Chart.jsNot statedNo report; ARIA left to you1; no SBOMNone found
Plotly.jsNot statedNo report found42; no SBOMSECURITY.md
D3.jsNot statedNo module; no report30 of its own modules; no SBOMNone found
AG ChartsNot statedKeyboard, screen reader; no report3, Enterprise 2; a CycloneDX SBOMSECURITY.md
SciChart.jsNot statedBuilt by you through its APIs; no reportNone; no SBOM statedNone published
LightningChart JSNot statedNo report found3; no SBOMNone found
Vega-LiteNot statedARIA on SVG; no keyboard, no report6, and Vega's own 27; no SBOMSECURITY.md
Heavy data
LibraryOn the GPUThe most it claims
Hue ChartsFast mode on the GPU, and exact modeFour billion samples by range, zoomed at 139 frames a second
HighchartsWebGL, its Boost moduleA million scatter points
amCharts 5Canvas; WebGL for map rasters onlyNot stated
Apache EChartsThrough ECharts GLMillions of points
Chart.jsNo: Canvas 2DNot stated
Plotly.jsWebGL tracesA million points
D3.jsSVG or Canvas, as you build itNot stated
AG ChartsNot statedOver a million points
SciChart.jsWebGL, WebAssembly, WebGPU100 million points at 60 frames a second
LightningChart JSWebGL4,000 million line points
Vega-LiteNo: Canvas or SVGNot stated

Every answer from each vendor's own pages, read at its latest release on 17 October 2026, and LightningChart JS's most on 23 October; dependencies from npm, Power BI visuals from Microsoft's AppSource. A price “by seat” is ten times the vendor's own seat price. A full mark is what it offers, a lighter one a part of it or an add-on, an empty one none; “not stated” means its pages say nothing, which is not proof it is missing.

Heavy data

A billion samples, every peak kept.

One spike among a billion samples is drawn in its place at every zoom, from the whole record down to a few hundred samples.
A line of a million points, a seeded random walk, drawn whole; past 4,000 points each pixel column keeps its full range.
A million points, one column per pixel: the library's own million-point line, drawn in Exact.

17 ms

to draw a million-point line first, then about 6 ms a frame as you zoom

136 ms

to draw a million-point scatter first, every point counted once, then about 15 ms a frame

114 ms

to draw ten million points as a line first; about 3.1 s as a scatter

16 MB

for a live stream's million-point window, fixed, tested over ten million values

  • Billions of samples

    A billion samples zoom at 147 frames a second, and four billion at 139, on a screen at 154 Hz.

  • Opens on its data

    A million-point line draws first in 17 ms on the CPU, so a dashboard opens on its data.

  • Zooms on the GPU

    A million points zoom at 124 frames a second on the GPU, and ten million at 140, on a desktop at 154 Hz.

  • Streams in fixed memory

    Live feeds append for as long as they run, and the window's memory holds steady.

  • The same on the server

    The same speed in node for reports and email, with the same digest as the browser.

760 × 420 on the CPU in Node 24.8, on an Intel Core i7-14700K desktop at normal priority, as a server runs, 28 October 2026: a first draw of new data, and a frame over the same data after it. The stream's window is fixed by its construction.

Fast mode on the GPU, a million and ten million points held and zoomed for three seconds in Edge 156 on an Intel Core i7-14700K with an RTX 4060 Ti, on a screen read at 154 Hz, 28 October 2026.

Fast mode, a billion and four billion samples by range, their extremes built first in 3.8 s and 32.3 s, each zoomed from the whole to a thousandth and back for three seconds in Edge 156, Intel Core i7-14700K and RTX 4060 Ti, on a screen read at 154 Hz, 28 October 2026.

One spike in a billion samples by range, its extremes built first in 2.96 s, traced at twelve zooms to 238 samples in Node 24.8, Intel Core i7-14700K, 28 October 2026.

Assistants and MCP

Where the picture is made

An assistant can draw a chart for you. Where it draws it is the difference.

Over the Model Context Protocol, Hue Charts draws the chart on your own machine: no account to run it, no cloud call, no cost per chart. Its pictures carry the Hue Charts credit, which a Business or Enterprise plan switches off.

  • Renders on your machine

    Hue Charts: the only vendor's own server found that draws its pictures with no network call.

  • Renders in a cloud

    One of Highcharts' three servers, a picture back from the vendor's service; Apache ECharts' reference example, its pictures kept in the user's own cloud storage.

  • Works what is already built

    Tableau's server works a dashboard, Power BI's a semantic model, and Dash's a running app's layout and callbacks.

  • Documentation and code

    Highcharts' other two (documentation, validation and production-ready code), and AG Charts', amCharts 5's, SciChart.js' and LightningChart JS': references and code, never a picture.

  • No official server

    Chart.js, D3, TradingView Lightweight, deck.gl and three.js. Of the community servers, Chart.js' renders on your machine; the D3 and TradingView ones write code.

Questions buyers ask

Questions buyers ask

Questions buyers ask about Hue Charts, and the answer to each.
QuestionAnswer
A young productEverything is tested and documented from the source, and the tests run anywhere without a single dependency; nothing is hidden behind a binary or a service.
Incumbents' ecosystemsThe spec is plain JSON a person or a model can write; the output is standard PNG, SVG and PDF that every tool opens.
Performance claims against GPU librariesEach figure is measured, with its machine and date under Heavy data. Exact mode draws on the CPU, the same picture on every engine the SLA covers. Fast mode draws on the GPU as a game does, faster on most charts and without a digest.
Accessibility parity with HighchartsKeyboard, announcements, data tables, solved palettes, full-size series switches and a published WCAG 2.2 AA report. An independent audit with screen-reader users is still to do.

For your business case

The detail, when you write it up.

What businesses draw, sector by sector
What businesses in each sector draw, and the guarantee that matters to them.
SectorChartsThe guarantee that matters
FinanceCandlestick with moving average and Bollinger bands, waterfall bridges, live feedsthe digest for regulated reporting; deterministic PDFs for board packs
HealthcareECGs, EEGs and Holters and hypnograms, with Business and Enterprise; box plots and error barsaccessibility law; the same output for the same record, with its digest
Energy and climateStreamgraphs of the generation mix, weather boardslong series at full resolution; SVG for publication
LogisticsFlow maps on great circles, Ganttmaps without a map vendor; charts that answer a click
SaaS and web analyticsFunnels, cohort heatmaps, area, donut, world mapthe Chart Studio and the JSON spec in the product itself
Public sectorChoropleths, population pyramids, bullets against targetsaccessibility law, air-gapped deployment, no runtime dependencies
Science and manufacturingStrip charts, persistence and eye diagrams, order tracking and Campbell diagrams, chromatograms, mass spectra and stacked NMR, IR, Raman and UV-Vis spectra, spectrograms and spectrum waterfalls, Bode plots, Smith charts and antenna polar plots, with Business and Enterprise; histograms and scatter at millions of pointsexactness at scale; the same figure on every machine
GeoscienceCross-plots of a well's logs among the lithology lines, with Business and Enterpriseevery sample of the log kept; the same figure on every machine, with its digest
What each person who signs off gets
Who signs off on a chart library, their problem, and what Hue Charts gives them.
WhoTheir problemWhat Hue Charts gives them
Security and platformEvery npm dependency is an attack surface; the 2025 compromises (chalk, debug, Shai-Hulud) reached billions of weekly downloads.One package to audit: zero runtime dependencies, no install scripts, an SBOM in CycloneDX and SPDX of every shipped file and of what it carries from others, each with its licence, no eval, no CDN, runs under a strict CSP and air-gapped.
Compliance and auditReports must be reproducible; the EU Cyber Resilience Act has required vulnerability reporting since 11 September 2026, and requires SBOMs from December 2027.A chart is the same bytes on every machine, with an eight-digit digest to file beside the report. Rerun it next year and the digest must match.
AccessibilityThe European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025; US ADA Title II deadlines follow in 2027 and 2028.Keyboard navigation through the data, screen-reader announcements, a data table for every chart, palettes solved for colour-vision deficiency, high contrast and forced colours honoured, SVGs and PDFs that carry their data as text.
EngineeringChart libraries that differ in look, API and data shape.One catalogue of 61 charts and one declared spec that people, servers and language models write the same way. The PNG, SVG, PDF and movement all come from one drawing.
Data and analyticsBig series slow browsers down or get sampled until they lie.Every peak of a billion samples kept, each pixel column holding its full range, and a million points drawn in tens of milliseconds.
Finance and procurementPer-seat licences, OEM tiers, domain locks and five-figure embedded BI.Free to use; one published price for a whole organisation, with no seats, no licence keys, no phone-home and no domain lock.
How to adopt it, and the decision

How to adopt it

  1. A pilot of one week.Pick three charts your product already has. Render them server-side in node, export PDF and SVG, file the digests, and run the accessibility check on your brand palette.
  2. Integrate.Hand the chart spec from your backend or your model; the Chart Studio on this site writes the same spec. Put the data table and keyboard navigation in front of your accessibility team.
  3. Scale.Move big series to the reductions that keep every peak, reports to the PDF writer, and audits to the digests.

The decision

Hue Charts is for reports someone must stand behind, products under accessibility law, and teams that review every dependency. It brings no dependencies, the same picture everywhere, charts everyone can read, and movement with a digest in every frame. It draws a million points without a GPU, keeps every peak of a billion, and holds 61 charts in one spec. Start with the one-week pilot.

Sources

Where every figure comes from.

Vendor details and prices from each vendor's own pages, 17 October 2026, LightningChart JS's own performance figures 23 October 2026, Tableau's an estimate of 23 September 2026; the GPU survey, 23 September 2026; the assistants (MCP) research, 3 October 2026, read again 21 October 2026; performance measured on an i7-14700K desktop, 28 October 2026.