Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Cube.js VS Plotly

Compare Cube.js VS Plotly and see what are their differences

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Cube.js logo Cube.js

An open source framework to add customer-facing analytics to any application.

Plotly logo Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps
  • Cube.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26
  • Plotly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-31

Cube.js features and specs

  • Open Source
    Cube.js is open-source, meaning it's free to use and has a community of developers contributing to its improvement. This fosters collaboration, transparency, and faster iteration of features and bug fixes.
  • API-First Approach
    Cube.js provides an API-first approach, allowing you to easily integrate it into existing applications and workflows. This flexibility makes it suitable for a variety of use cases.
  • Pre-Aggregations
    Cube.js includes built-in support for pre-aggregations, significantly speeding up query performance by pre-calculating data and reducing the load on your database.
  • Database Compatibility
    It supports multiple databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and more, making it versatile and adaptable to different environments and technology stacks.
  • Scalability
    Cube.js can handle large datasets and high query loads, making it a scalable solution for growing applications or enterprises with extensive data needs.
  • Community and Documentation
    Cube.js has a strong community and comprehensive documentation, which can aid in troubleshooting, implementation, and learning best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Cube.js

  • Learning Curve
    Despite the comprehensive documentation, Cube.js can have a steep learning curve due to its wide range of features and the complexity of setting up pre-aggregations and schema design.
  • Performance Overhead
    For smaller applications, the performance overhead introduced by Cube.js might not justify its use, as the pre-aggregation and processing layers could add complexity without substantial performance gains.
  • Dependency on JavaScript/Node.js
    Cube.js is built on JavaScript and Node.js, which can be a limitation if your development stack relies primarily on other technologies, leading to potential integration challenges.
  • Community Support Limits
    While Cube.js has a decent community, it's not as extensive as some older, more established data processing or BI tools. This could result in fewer third-party integrations and plugins.
  • Initial Setup Time
    Setting up Cube.js initially can be time-consuming, particularly when configuring data schemas, security, and managing pre-aggregations for optimized performance.
  • Evolving Software
    As a relatively new and evolving tool, Cube.js might experience more frequent updates or changes, which could lead to stability issues or require continuous adaptation of your application.

Plotly features and specs

  • Interactivity
    Plotly offers highly interactive plots that allow users to pan, zoom, and hover over data points for more information. This enhances the user experience and provides deeper insights.
  • High-quality visualizations
    It provides aesthetically pleasing and highly customizable charts, making it suitable for publication-quality visuals.
  • Versatility
    Plotly supports multiple chart types including line charts, scatter plots, bar charts, and 3D plots, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
  • Python integration
    Plotly is well-integrated with Python and works seamlessly with other popular data science libraries like Pandas, NumPy, and Scikit-learn.
  • Web-based
    The plots can be easily embedded in web applications or dashboards, making it ideal for sharing insights over the internet.
  • Open-source
    Plotly offers an open-source version, which allows users to create and share visualizations without any cost.

Possible disadvantages of Plotly

  • Performance
    Rendering very large datasets can sometimes be slow, which may not be suitable for real-time data visualization requirements.
  • Learning curve
    Even though the library is well-documented, the extensive range of features can have a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Cost for advanced features
    While the basic functionality is free, more advanced features, such as export to certain formats and additional customizable options, require a paid subscription.
  • Dependency management
    Plotly has a number of dependencies that need to be managed properly, which can sometimes complicate the setup process.
  • Complexity
    For simple visualizations, Plotly might be overkill and simpler libraries like Matplotlib or Seaborn could be more appropriate.

Analysis of Cube.js

Overall verdict

  • Cube.js is generally considered a good choice for developers looking to implement a scalable analytical backend. It excels in terms of performance, ease of use, and its ability to integrate with multiple data sources and visualization tools. However, the best choice depends on the specific needs and constraints of your project.

Why this product is good

  • Cube.js is a popular open-source analytics framework designed to help developers build modern data applications. It provides a robust set of features for building and managing data dashboards, reports, and data visualizations. Cube.js supports SQL databases natively and is highly optimized for performance, making it suitable for real-time analytics. Its modular architecture allows it to be integrated with various data sources and front-end frameworks, providing flexibility and scalability.

Recommended for

    Cube.js is recommended for developers and companies looking to build real-time analytics platforms, data visualization dashboards, and reporting tools. It is especially suitable for those who require a flexible and scalable infrastructure capable of handling large volumes of data across various sources.

Analysis of Plotly

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Plotly is a strong choice for those looking to create dynamic and interactive data visualizations, thanks to its range of features and ease of integration with web technologies.

Why this product is good

  • Plotly is considered good because it offers a comprehensive suite of tools for creating interactive visualizations that can be used in web applications, reports, and dashboards. It supports many different types of plots, is easy to use for both beginners and experienced developers, and integrates well with popular programming languages like Python, R, and JavaScript.

Recommended for

    Plotly is recommended for data scientists, analysts, and developers who need to create interactive and visually appealing data visualizations. It's particularly useful for those who work with Python or R and want the ability to embed their visualizations in web applications or dashboards.

Cube.js videos

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Plotly videos

Create Real-time Chart with Javascript | Plotly.js Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Introducing plotly.py 3.0
  • Review - Is Plotly The Better Matplotlib?
  • Tutorial - Plotly Tutorial 2021
  • Review - Data Visualization as The First and Last Mile of Data Science Plotly Express and Dash | SciPy 2021

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Cube.js and Plotly)
Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Data Visualization
0 0%
100% 100
Web Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Data Dashboard
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Cube.js and Plotly

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Plotly Reviews

Best 8 Redash Alternatives in 2023 [In Depth Guide]
Plotly is specifically designed for companies who want to build and deploy analytic applications like dashboards using Python, Julia, or R without needing DevOps or Javascript developers.
Source: www.datapad.io
5 Best Python Libraries For Data Visualization in 2023
Plotly is a web-based data visualization toolkit that comes with unique functionalities such as dendrograms, 3D charts, and also contour plots, which is not very common in other libraries. It has a great API offering scatter plots, line charts, bar charts, error bars, box plots, and other visualizations. Plotly can even be accessed from a Python Notebook.
Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization
Plotly is a free open-source graphing library that can be used to form data visualizations. Plotly (plotly.py) is built on top of the Plotly JavaScript library (plotly.js) and can be used to create web-based data visualizations that can be displayed in Jupyter notebooks or web applications using Dash or saved as individual HTML files. Plotly provides more than 40 unique...
5 top picks for JavaScript chart libraries
Plotly is a graphing library that’s available for various runtime environments, including the browser. It supports many kinds of charts and graphs that we can configure with a variety of options.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Plotly seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 33 times since March 2021. 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.

Cube.js mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Cube.js yet. Tracking of Cube.js recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Plotly mentions (33)

  • Python for Data Visualization: Best Tools and Practices
    Plotly is perfect for interactive visualizations. You can create interactive charts and graphs that allow users to hover, click, and zoom in. Plotly is also great for web-based visuals, making it easy to share your findings online. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Generative AI Powered QnA & Visualization Chatbot
    Front End: A React application that leverages React-Chatbotify library to easily integrate a chatbot GUI. It also uses the Plotly library to display the charts/visualizations. The generative AI implementation and details are entirely abstracted from the front end. The front-end application depends on a single REST endpoint of the backend application. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Build a Stock Dashboard in less than 40 lines of Python code!🤓
    In this tutorial, Mariya Sha will guide you through building a stock value dashboard using Taipy, Plotly, and a dataset from Kaggle. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Essential Deep Learning Checklist: Best Practices Unveiled
    How to Accomplish: Utilize visualization libraries like Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Plotly in Python to create histograms, scatter plots, and bar charts. For image data, use tools that visualize images alongside their labels to check for labeling accuracy. For structured data, correlation matrices and pair plots can be highly informative. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Python equivalent to power bi/power query?
    For dashboards: - https://plotly.com/ is probably my favourite, but there are others like streamlit, voila and others... Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Cube.js and Plotly, you can also consider the following products

Fathom Analytics - Simple, trustworthy website analytics (finally)

D3.js - D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.

Simple Analytics - The privacy-first Google Analytics alternative located in Europe.

Chart.js - Easy, object oriented client side graphs for designers and developers.

Plausible.io - Plausible Analytics is a simple, open-source, lightweight (< 1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics. Made and hosted in the EU, powered by European-owned cloud infrastructure 🇪🇺

RAWGraphs - RAWGraphs is an open source app built with the goal of making the visualization of complex data...