Carbon µPlot

Carbon µPlot

Carbon-styled observability charts built on µPlot — for metrics, monitoring, and operational dashboards.

Area chart preview

Built for observability data

Columnar by default

Most charting libraries use row objects — one object per data point across all series. Prometheus, CloudWatch, and InfluxDB return parallel arrays: one timestamp array, one value array per series. That is µPlot's native format — no reshape, no per-point object allocation, no transformation step.

Canvas rendering for dense data

µPlot renders on Canvas, not SVG. SVG creates a DOM node for each data point — a chart with 1,000 points across 5 series is 5,000 elements the browser must layout, paint, and manage. Canvas draws pixels directly. Adding data points costs almost nothing extra.

Carbon tokens, zero extra CSS

carbon-µPlot reads Carbon CSS custom properties directly. If your application already uses Carbon, there is nothing extra to load. All four themes — White, G10, G90, G100 — work without any chart-specific configuration.

Chart types

Carbon µPlot vs Carbon Charts

@carbon/charts covers 23 chart types built on D3 — from alluvial diagrams to word clouds. carbon-µPlot is the focused alternative for teams that need only observability charts with the smallest possible path to Carbon styling.

carbon-µPlot@carbon/charts
Carbon CSS
Reads tokens already in your app
Full Carbon CSS required
Data format
Columnar arrays (µPlot native)
Row objects
Dense time-series
Canvas — cost is constant per frame
SVG DOM — cost grows with point count
Observability chart types
Line, area, bar, scatter, gauge, stat, heatmap, bar gauge
Line, area, bar, scatter, gauge, and more
Bundle size
~65 KB min / ~46 KB gz
543 KB min / 155 KB gz
General visualization
Pie, treemap, sankey, heatmap, and 15 more

Use carbon-µPlot when you are

  • Building a metrics, monitoring, or observability dashboard
  • Working with dense time-series data or frequent data refresh
  • Already using Carbon and want charts that respect your token overrides
  • Shipping a product where bundle size matters

Use @carbon/charts when you need

  • Pie, donut, treemap, sankey, or alluvial charts
  • A chart type outside the observability set
  • A single library covering all visualization across a product