There's no plan to compare: the library itself is free at any scale, so the only cost is the developer time to integrate and maintain it.
About
In practice. What you can do with ECharts.
ECharts is a JavaScript charting library, not a hosted app: it ships more than 20 chart types plus reusable components (legends, tooltips, data zoom), Canvas and SVG rendering, built-in dataset transforms (filtering, clustering, regression), and accessibility features like automatic chart descriptions and decal patterns.
It's free and open source under the Apache Software Foundation, with no license fee at any scale. The trade-off is that a team has to integrate and maintain it inside their own codebase, with no built-in dashboard hosting, collaboration or official commercial support beyond the open-source community and GitHub issues.
Practical uses
Analytics dashboardRender a mix of line, bar and heatmap charts from live data inside a custom web app.
Large dataset visualizationUse progressive rendering to plot a very large dataset (millions of points) without freezing the browser.
Features & use cases
Charting
Data visualisation
Pros and cons. What ECharts does well, and what to expect.
Pros
Free and open source with no license cost, covering more than 20 chart types out of the box.
Handles very large datasets through progressive rendering, claimed at up to 10 million points in real time.
Cons
It's a library to integrate and maintain in your own codebase, with no hosted dashboard or built-in collaboration.
No official commercial support channel or SLA; help comes from the open-source community and GitHub issues.
When it makes sense. Keep ECharts, or challenge it?
Keep if
You're building charts directly into your own web app or dashboard and want a wide range of chart types without a license fee.
Challenge if
You need a hosted dashboard with built-in collaboration and official commercial support; ECharts only gives you the charting layer, not the app around it.
Our verdict. What to know about ECharts.
Why this verdict
Excellent
Added value
It's free and open source with more than 20 chart types and a dozen reusable components out of the box, so there's no license cost to justify against a paid charting library.
Simplicity
Neutral score: time to render a first working chart for a developer new to the library is not covered by the collected sources.
Fit for purpose
Chart rendering, dataset transforms and accessibility features work as described directly inside a web codebase, without needing a separate hosted tool.
Performance
More than 20 chart types, Canvas and SVG rendering, built-in data transforms (filtering, clustering, regression), and a claimed real-time rendering of 10 million data points put it at the high end of JS charting libraries.
Reversibility
As an Apache-licensed open-source library rendering to standard Canvas or SVG output, there's no proprietary data format or vendor lock-in to escape.