# TradingView Advanced Charts vs Lightweight Charts One vendor, two charting libraries, and the choice is made by the licence rather than the feature list — because the free one stops being free behind a paywall. *https://cryptomarkets.tools/compare/tradingview-charting-libraries* - https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradingview-advanced-charts.md - https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradingview-lightweight-charts.md ## Same vendor, same category, and the licence decides it These two are in the catalogue as separate cards because they are separate purchases with separate terms, and a reader who compares them on features will reach the wrong answer. The feature gap is enormous and obvious. The licence gap is small, quiet and the one that actually rules products out. **[Advanced Charts](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradingview-advanced-charts)** is the chart engine other companies put in front of their own users — a widget constructor, a datafeed interface, roughly 110 drawing tools, over 100 indicators, custom indicators in JavaScript, eight price scales, synchronised layouts, watchlists. It is why this category has a library half at all; [Velo](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/velo) and [Bubblemaps](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/bubblemaps) both have one embedded. **[Lightweight Charts](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/tradingview-lightweight-charts)** is a canvas renderer and deliberately nothing else. Candles, bars, lines, areas, baselines, histograms, a time scale that behaves like a trading chart, real-time updates, one runtime dependency. ## The condition that removes Advanced Charts from most crypto products Its free licence holds while two things are true at once: **the TradingView attribution stays visible**, and **the implementation environment is public** — which the documentation defines as not for private use and not behind a paywall. Read the second one against the product you are building. A subscription analytics tool is behind a paywall. An internal desk dashboard is private use. A client portal is both. The free route does not cover any of them, and the vendor's comparison table compresses all of this into a footnote reading "free with TradingView logo", which is exactly how a team ends up discovering the condition at launch instead of at the spike. Lightweight Charts has no equivalent clause anywhere. Apache-2.0, stock text, 201 lines, "Copyright 2023 TradingView, Inc.", and the vendor's own table prints "Apache 2.0" and marks it open source. The attribution it asks for is a README request pointing at the `attributionLogo` layout option — a request, in a file that is not the licence, rather than a condition on the grant. ## The weight difference, with the marketing number corrected 670 KB against roughly 60 KB gzipped. The vendor advertises 35 KB for Lightweight Charts and that figure is stale: measured from the published v5.2.1 files, the standalone production build is 197,827 bytes raw and 62,038 gzipped, the non-standalone 189,213 and 60,294. Still an order of magnitude under Advanced Charts, still small for a financial chart, and still not the number on the page. That gap is not waste. Advanced Charts is a charting application — dialogs, an indicator engine, a drawing palette, localisation into more than thirty languages. You are paying for the apparatus in bytes because you are getting the apparatus. ## Which one, and when **Take Lightweight Charts** if your product is behind a login, behind a paywall, internal, or any combination — the licence question is settled and nothing else about this comparison matters. Also take it if all you need is candles that behave properly and you would rather own the interaction design. **Take Advanced Charts** if your chart is the product's main workspace, your users expect to draw and to add studies, and your environment is public with the attribution in place. Rebuilding the drawing palette and indicator engine yourself is a developer-year, and that is the real price being compared here. **Take neither, yet,** if you have not solved the data. Both ship zero candles. That decision lives in [market data APIs](https://cryptomarkets.tools/categories/market-data-apis), and it is the one that determines whether either library is worth installing — as the paid libraries in this category, [ChartIQ](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/chartiq) and [Highcharts Stock](https://cryptomarkets.tools/tools/highcharts-stock), would also tell you. ## FAQ ### Which one is free? Both, on completely different terms. Lightweight Charts is Apache-2.0 — the LICENSE file on the default branch is the stock licence in full, with no added clause — so there is no condition on where your chart lives. Advanced Charts is proprietary and free only while the TradingView attribution stays visible and the implementation environment is public, which the documentation defines as not for private use and not behind a paywall. ### Does that mean I cannot use Advanced Charts in a paid product? Not on the free terms, as the documentation words them. A product behind a login and a subscription is the case the condition names, and an internal tool is the other one. That is the single fact that decides this choice for most crypto products, and it should be settled before anyone compares indicator counts. ### How much bigger is Advanced Charts? The vendor's own figure is 670 KB against 35 KB. The 35 is stale — measured on 19 September 2026 from the published v5.2.1 files, the standalone production build of Lightweight Charts is about 62 KB gzipped and the non-standalone about 60 KB. So roughly 60 KB over the wire against a stated 670 KB, which is still an order of magnitude apart. ### What do I give up with Lightweight Charts? Everything except the rendering. No indicators, no drawing tools, no watchlist, no news, no trading UI, and two price scales rather than eight — all marked absent in the vendor's own comparison table. If your users expect to draw a trend line or add an RSI, you are either writing that yourself or you are on the other library. ### Do either of them ship market data? Neither, and Advanced Charts is explicit about it — its strapline is "your servers, your data, TradingView's charts". Every candle is yours to source, which in crypto means the work in the market-data category has to be done first.