Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Colaboratory VS Jupyter

Compare Colaboratory VS Jupyter and see what are their differences

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Colaboratory logo Colaboratory

Free Jupyter notebook environment in the cloud.

Jupyter logo Jupyter

Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.
  • Colaboratory Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01
  • Jupyter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22

Colaboratory features and specs

  • Free Access
    Colaboratory is freely available to anyone with a Google account, making it accessible for students, researchers, and developers without cost barriers.
  • Cloud-based
    Colab operates in the cloud, eliminating the need for local computational resources and allowing access from any device with internet connectivity.
  • GPU and TPU Support
    Colab provides free access to GPUs and TPUs, which can significantly speed up machine learning tasks and deep learning experiments.
  • Integration with Google Drive
    Easy integration with Google Drive allows for convenient storage and retrieval of data, notebooks, and other resources.
  • Collaborative Editing
    Multiple users can collaborate on a notebook in real-time, making it a valuable tool for team projects and pair programming.
  • Pre-configured Environment
    Colab comes pre-installed with a wide array of popular machine learning libraries and dependencies, reducing setup time and effort.

Possible disadvantages of Colaboratory

  • Session Time Limits
    Colab has time limits for sessions, meaning your environment can be reset if left idle for too long or if the maximum session duration is reached.
  • Resource Limits
    There are limitations on the computational resources and memory available, which can be restrictive for very large and complex tasks.
  • Dependency Management
    While many libraries are pre-installed, managing and updating dependencies can sometimes be problematic, leading to conflicts or version issues.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Since your code and data are stored on Google’s servers, there can be privacy and security concerns related to sensitive information.
  • Network Dependency
    Being a cloud-based service, Colaboratory requires a constant internet connection, which may not be feasible in all scenarios or locations.
  • Limited Customization
    Customization of the environment is limited compared to a local setup where you have full control over system configurations and installed software.

Jupyter features and specs

  • Interactive Computing
    Jupyter allows real-time interaction with the data and code, providing immediate feedback and making it easier to experiment and iterate.
  • Rich Media Output
    It supports output in various formats including HTML, images, videos, LaTeX, and more, enhancing the ability to visualize and interpret results.
  • Language Agnostic
    Jupyter supports multiple programming languages through its kernel system (e.g., Python, R, Julia), allowing flexibility in the choice of tools.
  • Collaborative Features
    It enables collaboration through shared notebooks, version control, and platform integrations like GitHub.
  • Educational Tool
    Jupyter is widely used for teaching, thanks to its easy-to-use interface and ability to combine narrative text with code, making it ideal for assignments and tutorials.
  • Extensibility
    Jupyter is highly extensible with a large ecosystem of plugins and extensions available for various functionalities.

Possible disadvantages of Jupyter

  • Performance Issues
    For larger datasets and more complex computations, Jupyter can be slower compared to running scripts directly in a dedicated IDE.
  • Version Control Challenges
    Managing version control for Jupyter notebooks can be cumbersome, as they are not plain text files and include metadata that can make diffing and merging complex.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Jupyter notebooks can be resource-intensive, especially when working with multiple large notebooks simultaneously.
  • Security Concerns
    Because Jupyter allows code execution in the browser, it can be a potential security risk if notebooks from untrusted sources are run without restrictions.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and ensuring that the notebook runs consistently across different environments can be challenging.
  • Less Suitable for Production
    Jupyter is often considered more as a research and educational tool rather than a production environment; transitioning from a notebook to production code can require significant refactoring.

Colaboratory videos

Google Colaboratory review: the best tool for Python programming and data analysis

Jupyter videos

What is Jupyter Notebook?

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Jupyter Notebook Tutorial: Introduction, Setup, and Walkthrough
  • Review - JupyterLab: The Next Generation Jupyter Web Interface

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Colaboratory and Jupyter)
Development
100 100%
0% 0
Data Science And Machine Learning
Online Learning
100 100%
0% 0
Data Dashboard
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Colaboratory and Jupyter. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Colaboratory and Jupyter

Colaboratory Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Google Colaboratory (known as Colab) is a browser-based notebook created by the Google team. The environment is based on the Jupyter Notebook environment, so it will be recognizable to those of you who are already familiar with Jupyter.
Source: lakefs.io
12 Best Jupyter Notebook Alternatives [2023] – Features, pros & cons, pricing
Microsoft Azure Notebooks is a cloud-based platform for data science projects and machine learning that is similar to Google Colab and Kaggle Notebooks. It provides access to powerful hardware resources, including GPUs and TPUs, for running machine learning and deep learning models, as well as a number of other useful features, such as integration with Microsoft Azure...
Source: noteable.io

Jupyter Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Once you install nteract, you can open your notebook without having to launch the Jupyter Notebook or visit the Jupyter Lab. The nteract environment is similar to Jupyter Notebook but with more control and the possibility of extension via libraries like Papermill (notebook parameterization), Scrapbook (saving your notebook’s data and photos), and Bookstore (versioning).
Source: lakefs.io
7 best Colab alternatives in 2023
JupyterLab is the next-generation user interface for Project Jupyter. Like Colab, it's an interactive development environment for working with notebooks, code, and data. However, JupyterLab offers more flexibility as it can be self-hosted, enabling users to use their own hardware resources. It also supports extensions for integrating other services, making it a highly...
Source: deepnote.com
12 Best Jupyter Notebook Alternatives [2023] – Features, pros & cons, pricing
Jupyter Notebook is a widely popular tool for data scientists to work on data science projects. This article reviews the top 12 alternatives to Jupyter Notebook that offer additional features and capabilities.
Source: noteable.io
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Jupyter Notebook's roots are in the programming language Python -- it originally was part of the IPython interactive toolkit open source project before being split off in 2014. The loose combination of Julia, Python and R gave Jupyter its name; along with supporting those three languages, Jupyter has modular kernels for dozens of others.
Top 4 Python and Data Science IDEs for 2021 and Beyond
Yep — it’s the most popular IDE among data scientists. Jupyter Notebooks made interactivity a thing, and Jupyter Lab took the user experience to the next level. It’s a minimalistic IDE that does the essentials out of the box and provides options and hacks for more advanced use.

Social recommendations and mentions

Colaboratory might be a bit more popular than Jupyter. We know about 224 links to it since March 2021 and only 216 links to Jupyter. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Colaboratory mentions (224)

  • Introduction to TensorFlow with real code examples
    If you don't want to set up TensorFlow locally, you can use Google Colab, which comes with a GPU by default. You can access it via this link. - Source: dev.to / 25 days ago
  • The 3 Best Python Frameworks To Build UIs for AI Apps
    Showcase and share: Easily embed UIs in Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab or share them on Hugging Face using a public link. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Build a RAG-Powered Research Paper Assistant
    Google Colab Documentation Beginner-friendly documentation to get started with Google Colab: Https://colab.research.google.com/. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • PyTorch Fundamentals: A Beginner-Friendly Guide
    If you don't want to install PyTorch locally, you can use Google Colab, which provides a free cloud-based environment with PyTorch pre-installed. This allows you to run PyTorch code without any setup on your local machine. Simply go to Google Colab and create a new notebook. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence & its role in an AGI World
    Leverage versatile resources to prototype and refine your ideas, such as Jupyter Notebooks for rapid iterations, Google Colabs for cloud-based experimentation, OpenAI’s API Playground for testing and fine-tuning prompts, and Anthropic's Prompt Engineering Library for inspiration and guidance on advanced prompting techniques. For frontend experimentation, tools like v0 are invaluable, providing a seamless way to... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
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Jupyter mentions (216)

  • The 3 Best Python Frameworks To Build UIs for AI Apps
    Showcase and share: Easily embed UIs in Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab or share them on Hugging Face using a public link. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • LangChain: From Chains to Threads
    LangChain wasn’t designed in isolation — it was built in the data pipeline world, where every data engineer’s tool of choice was Jupyter Notebooks. Jupyter was an innovative tool, making pipeline programming easy to experiment with, iterate on, and debug. It was a perfect fit for machine learning workflows, where you preprocess data, train models, analyze outputs, and fine-tune parameters — all in a structured,... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence & its role in an AGI World
    Leverage versatile resources to prototype and refine your ideas, such as Jupyter Notebooks for rapid iterations, Google Colabs for cloud-based experimentation, OpenAI’s API Playground for testing and fine-tuning prompts, and Anthropic's Prompt Engineering Library for inspiration and guidance on advanced prompting techniques. For frontend experimentation, tools like v0 are invaluable, providing a seamless way to... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Jupyter Notebook for Java
    Lately I've been working on Langgraph4J which is a Java implementation of the more famous Langgraph.js which is a Javascript library used to create agent and multi-agent workflows by Langchain. Interesting note is that [Langchain.js] uses Javascript Jupyter notebooks powered by a DENO Jupiter Kernel to implement and document How-Tos. So, I faced a dilemma on how to use (or possibly simulate) the same approach in... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • JIRA Analytics with Pandas
    One of the most convenient ways to play with datasets is to utilize Jupyter. If you are not familiar with this tool, do not worry. I will show how to use it to solve our problem. For local experiments, I like to use DataSpell by JetBrains, but there are services available online and for free. One of the most well-known services among data scientists is Kaggle. However, their notebooks don't allow you to make... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Colaboratory and Jupyter, you can also consider the following products

Kaggle - Kaggle offers innovative business results and solutions to companies.

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

Teammately.ai - Teammately is The AI AI-Engineer - the AI Agent for AI Engineers that autonomously builds AI Products, Models and Agents based on LLM, prompt, RAG and ML.

Databricks - Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

replit - Code, create, andlearn together. Use our free, collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages — without spending a second on setup.

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.