| Votes | By | Price | Discipline | Year Launched |
| DensityDesign Research Lab (Politecnico di Milano) | OPEN SOURCE | Interdisciplinary |
RAWGraphs (rawgraphs.io) has emerged as one of the most beloved tools for researchers, designers, and data-driven storytellers who need to quickly transform messy datasets into sophisticated visualizations—without writing a line of code. Built originally at the DensityDesign Lab (Politecnico di Milano), RAWGraphs positions itself between spreadsheet tools and professional visualization software. It democratizes advanced chart types—chord diagrams, Voronoi maps, Sankey flows, bump charts, streamgraphs, treemaps, and dozens more—that are normally difficult to produce without dedicated statistical libraries.
At its core, RAWGraphs is powered by open-source libraries (notably D3.js), wrapped in a clean, approachable interface. Users can simply paste or upload datasets (CSV, TSV, Excel, JSON), map variables onto visual “slots,” watch the chart generate instantly, and then export results as SVG, PNG, or JSON. The exported SVGs are fully editable in Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity Designer, or Figma, making it ideal for publication-quality graphics.
One of RAWGraphs’ biggest strengths is transparency: the tool never hides how a visualization is built. Each chart type comes with documentation on the data model, transformation logic, and representation choices, making it especially valuable in academic contexts where reproducibility and clarity matter. With its release of RAWGraphs 2.0, the platform became more modular, introducing new chart types, customizable color palettes, extensible chart modules, and the ability to run RAWGraphs locally for sensitive datasets—an important feature for labs and research groups handling confidential or unpublished information.
For the scientific community, RAWGraphs offers a rare combination: powerful visualization capabilities, open-source integrity, and an extremely low barrier to entry. In an environment where complex tools often require steep learning curves or costly licenses, RAWGraphs delivers something refreshing—visualization for everyone, with no compromises on quality.