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GNU Octave VS Julia

Compare GNU Octave VS Julia and see what are their differences

GNU Octave logo GNU Octave

GNU Octave is a programming language for scientific computing.

Julia logo Julia

Julia is a sophisticated programming language designed especially for numerical computing with specializations in analysis and computational science. It is also efficient for web use, general programming, and can be used as a specification language.
  • GNU Octave Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-08-07
  • Julia Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15

We recommend LibHunt Julia for discovery and comparisons of trending Julia projects.

GNU Octave features and specs

  • Free and Open Source
    GNU Octave is completely free to use and distribute. Its source code is available for anyone to inspect, modify, and enhance, providing transparency and community-driven improvements.
  • MATLAB Compatibility
    Octave aims to be mostly compatible with MATLAB, meaning that many scripts and functions written for MATLAB can run in Octave with little or no modification.
  • Extensive Documentation
    Octave has comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and a vast array of user-contributed content, easing the learning curve for new users.
  • Flexible Integration
    Octave can interface with various programming languages such as C, C++, Fortran, and Python, making it versatile for different types of projects and workflows.
  • Powerful Plotting Capabilities
    Octave includes features for generating high-quality plots and visualizations, which are essential for data analysis and presentation.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Octave

  • Performance
    In some cases, Octave may be slower than MATLAB, especially for highly optimized or proprietary algorithms that MATLAB handles more efficiently.
  • GUI and Toolboxes
    While Octave offers a graphical user interface, it is not as polished as MATLAB's. Additionally, the range and quality of toolboxes available in Octave can be more limited compared to MATLAB's extensive and well-supported toolboxes.
  • Community Support
    Although there is a supportive community around Octave, the user base and available support resources are smaller compared to MATLAB's extensive network of forums, user groups, and customer support.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic operations are straightforward, mastering advanced features and customizations in Octave can require a deeper understanding of its architecture and available functions.
  • Less Industry Adoption
    MATLAB is widely used in industry for research, engineering, and analytics. Octave, being an open-source alternative, lacks the same level of commercial adoption and institutional support, which can be a drawback in professional settings.

Julia features and specs

  • High Performance
    Julia uses Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation which allows it to run at speeds close to those of statically compiled languages like C and Fortran.
  • Ease of Use
    Julia’s syntax is simple and intuitive, similar to that of Python, making it accessible for newcomers and convenient for rapid development.
  • Strong Support for Mathematical Computing
    Designed with numerical and scientific computing in mind, Julia includes powerful mathematical functions and supports arbitrary precision arithmetic.
  • Multiple Dispatch
    Julia's multiple dispatch feature allows functions to be defined across many combinations of argument types which can lead to more flexible and extensible code.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    Julia has a growing ecosystem of libraries and tools, supported by an active community, catering to a wide range of applications including data science, machine learning, and more.
  • Interoperability
    Julia can easily call C and Fortran libraries directly without the need for wrappers, and it can also interact with Python, R, and MATLAB code.
  • First-Class Support for Parallelism
    Julia natively supports parallel and distributed computing, enabling efficient handling of large-scale computations.

Possible disadvantages of Julia

  • Immature Ecosystem
    Despite rapid growth, Julia's ecosystem is still not as mature or extensive as those of older, more established languages like Python or R.
  • Long Compilation Time
    The JIT compilation can lead to longer initial startup times for scripts, which might be a drawback for users accustomed to instantaneous execution.
  • Breaking Changes
    The language is still evolving, and updates sometimes include breaking changes that can disrupt existing codebases.
  • Limited Learning Resources
    Compared to other popular languages, there are fewer tutorials, books, and community resources for learning Julia.
  • Smaller Community
    While growing, the Julia community is smaller compared to well-established languages, which might limit the availability of peer support and community-driven development.
  • Package Management Issues
    Users sometimes experience difficulties with package management and dependency issues, especially when using older packages or packages with many dependencies.
  • Less Enterprise Adoption
    Julia has not been widely adopted in the enterprise sector, which can affect its perceived stability and support for mission-critical applications.

GNU Octave videos

GNU Octave Ep. 1.5: What's different compared to MatLab!

Julia videos

Julie & Julia Movie Review: Beyond The Trailer

More videos:

  • Review - 'Julie & Julia' review by Michael Phillips
  • Review - Julie & Julia movie review by Kenneth Turan

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GNU Octave and Julia)
Technical Computing
79 79%
21% 21
Programming Language
0 0%
100% 100
Numerical Computation
86 86%
14% 14
3D
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GNU Octave and Julia

GNU Octave Reviews

7 Best MATLAB alternatives for Linux
FreeMAT is a free and open-source software for numerical computation. It is used for rapid engineering, scientific prototyping, and data processing. It is similar to MATLAB and GNU Octave and supports its various functions.
Matlab Alternatives
Scilab is an open-source similar to the implementation of Matlab. The approximation techniques known as Scientific Computing is used to solve numerical problems. To achieve this, the team of Scilab developers made use of Solvers and algorithms to build the algebraic libraries. Scilab is one of the major alternatives to Matlab along with GNU Octave.
Source: www.educba.com
10 Best MATLAB Alternatives [For Beginners and Professionals]
GNU Octave an open-source alternative to MATLAB. It is interactive and powerful featuring everything you need in one place.
4 open source alternatives to MATLAB
GNU Octave may be the best-known alternative to MATLAB. In active development for almost three decades, Octave runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac—and is packaged for most major distributions. If you're looking for a project that is as close to the actual MATLAB language as possible, Octave may be a good fit for you; it strives for exact compatibility, so many of your projects...
Source: opensource.com
3 Open Source Alternatives to MATLAB
GNU Octave may be the best-known alternatives to MATLAB. In active development for almost three decades, Octave runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux alike, and is packaged for most major distributions. If you're looking for a project that is as close to the actual MATLAB language as possible, Octave may be a good fit for you; it strives for exact compatibility, so many of your...

Julia Reviews

7 Best MATLAB alternatives for Linux
Julia is capable of direct calling C and Fortran libraries. You can create scripts in interactive mode (REPL) and by using its embedding API you can use Julia with other programming languages easily.
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Julia 1.0 became available in 2018, nine years after work began on the language; the latest version is 1.6, released in March 2021. The documentation for Julia notes that, because its compiler differs from the interpreters in data science languages like Python and R, new users "may find that Julia's performance is unintuitive at first." But, it claims, "once you understand...
10 Best MATLAB Alternatives [For Beginners and Professionals]
Talking about its capability, Julia can load multidimensional datasets and can perform various actions on them with total ease. Julia has over 13 million downloads as of today. It’s the proof of its flexibility
6 MATLAB Alternatives You Could Use
Strictly speaking, Julia is not a full “alternative” to MATLAB, in the sense that it’s essentially a high-level, dynamic programming language, intended for numerical computing. However, you can easily use it via the free Juno IDE. As for the language itself, it comes with a sophisticated compiler, with support for distributed parallel computing, and a large mathematical...
Source: beebom.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Julia seems to be a lot more popular than GNU Octave. While we know about 125 links to Julia, we've tracked only 1 mention of GNU Octave. 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.

GNU Octave mentions (1)

  • everyday I get more certain that Algerian universities sucks...
    As for Matlab, I think you'll be just fine with using GNU Octave. Source: about 3 years ago

Julia mentions (125)

  • Top Programming Languages for AI Development in 2025
    Julia: Exceptional Numerical Processing. - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • Building a Secret Scanner in Julia: A GitLeaks Alternative
    To use Julia – one of the best programming languages, which is unfairly considered niche. Its applications go far beyond HPC. It’s perfectly suited for solving a wide range of problems. - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
  • A data scientist's journey building a B2B data product with Julia and Pluto
    In this post, I’m exploring dev tools for data scientists, specifically Julia and Pluto.jl. I interviewed Mandar, a data scientist and software engineer, about his experience adopting Pluto, a reactive notebook environment similar to Jupyter notebooks. What’s different about Pluto is that it’s designed specifically for Julia, a programming language built for scientific computing and machine learning. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • What is Open-Source? Beginners Guide How to Get Started.
    Julia Seasons of Contributions (JSoC). - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • I Chose Common Lisp
    Related, Julia: https://julialang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GNU Octave and Julia, you can also consider the following products

MATLAB - A high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming

Python - Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Wolfram Mathematica - Mathematica has characterized the cutting edge in specialized processing—and gave the chief calculation environment to a large number of pioneers, instructors, understudies, and others around the globe.

Scilab - Scilab Official Website. Enter your search in the box aboveAbout ScilabScilab is free and open source software for numerical . Thanks for downloading Scilab!

Sage Math - Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL.

Maxima - Maxima is a fairly complete computer algebra system written in Lisp with an emphasis on symbolic computation.