Raphael

Pros: a good starter library, easy to do a LOT of things with SVG quickly. Well written and documented. Lots of examples and Demos. Very extensible architecture. Great with animation.

Cons: is a layer over the actual SVG markup, makes it difficult to do more complex things with SVG - such as grouping (it supports Sets, but not groups). Doesn’t do great w/ editing of already existing elements.

jQuery SVG

Pros: a jquery plugin, if you’re already using jQuery. Well written and documented. Lots of examples and demos. Supports most SVG elements, allows native access to elements easily

Cons: architecture not as extensible as Raphael. Some things could be better documented (like configure of SVG element). Doesn’t do great w/ editing of already existing elements. Relies on SVG semantics for animation - which is not that great.

SnapSVG as a pure SVG version of Raphael

SnapSVG is the successor of Raphael. It is supported only in the SVG enabled browsers and supports almost all the features of SVG.