Libraries - methnen/m-chart GitHub Wiki

Starting with Version 1.7 M Chart supports two graphing libraries.

Chart.js

Chart.js is the default library and is fully GPL compatible and licensed under an MIT license which is the same license M Chart is licensed under.

Highcharts

Highcharts is an optional library you can activate by installing the M Chart Highcharts Library plugin.

Highcharts was the original default library and thus anyone with previous charts will need to install it in order for their old charts to continue working.

Note: Highcharts is licensed under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) Creative Commons license. Essenetially this means it's free to use for non commercial purposes. Otherwise it requries you to purchase a license from Highsoft.

Chart.js vs. Highcharts

The Chart.js support in M Chart starting with version 1.8 supports all of the same chart types that are supported in Highcharts.

Version 1.8 of M Chart also adds theme support.

With these additions Chart.js support and Highcharts support are now basically the same aside from a few minor features; localization (Added in version 1.9), source/attribution, and subtitles (Added in version 1.9) being a few at the time I'm writing this.

However, Highcharts remains a more fully featured and extensible charting library.

The main limitation of Highcharts is the licensing which depending on your use case can require a fairly expensive yearly license fee.