Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GnuPlot VS Excelize

Compare GnuPlot VS Excelize and see what are their differences

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GnuPlot logo GnuPlot

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility.

Excelize logo Excelize

Go language library for reading and writing Microsoft Excelโ„ข (XLAM / XLSM / XLSX / XLTM / XLTX) spreadsheets
  • GnuPlot Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-13
  • Excelize Official Documentation WebSite
    Official Documentation WebSite //
    2025-11-07

Excelize is a library written in pure Go providing a set of functions that allow you to write to and read from XLSX / XLSM / XLTM / XLTX files. Supports reading and writing spreadsheet documents generated by Microsoft Excelโ„ข 2007 and later. Supports complex components by high compatibility, and provided streaming API for generating or reading data from a worksheet with huge amounts of data.

Excelize

Website
xuri.me
$ Details
freemium $5.0 / One-off
Platforms
Cross Platform Windows Mac OSX Linux Go Android iOS Cloud Docker
Release Date
2016 August

GnuPlot features and specs

  • Highly Customizable
    GnuPlot offers extensive customization options for creating plots, allowing users to tweak almost every aspect of the graph, including colors, labels, line styles, and more.
  • Scriptable
    GnuPlot can be driven by scripts, making it convenient for automating complex plots and integrating with other software workflows.
  • Wide Range of Output Formats
    It supports many output formats such as PNG, PDF, SVG, and EPS, making it easy to generate graphics for different purposes like presentations, publications, and web content.
  • Cross-Platform
    GnuPlot runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, ensuring that it can be used in diverse computing environments.
  • Complex Plotting Capabilities
    GnuPlot supports a wide variety of plots, including 2D and 3D plots, histograms, heatmaps, and more, which caters to the needs of advanced visualization requirements.
  • Performance
    GnuPlot is efficient and can handle large datasets with ease, offering fast rendering times which is crucial when dealing with complex visualizations.
  • Free and Open Source
    Being free and open-source software, GnuPlot is accessible to everyone, and users can modify the source code to suit their needs.

Possible disadvantages of GnuPlot

  • Steep Learning Curve
    GnuPlot has a complex syntax and a steep learning curve, especially for beginners who may find it difficult to get started without substantial effort.
  • Limited GUI
    GnuPlot lacks a full-featured graphical user interface (GUI), making it less user-friendly for those who prefer point-and-click interactions over scripting.
  • Documentation
    While comprehensive, the documentation can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate for new users trying to find specific information quickly.
  • Date Handling
    Handling and formatting dates can be cumbersome in GnuPlot, requiring more manual setup compared to other dedicated plotting tools.
  • Interactive Features
    GnuPlot's interactive plotting capabilities are limited compared to other modern plotting tools that offer more dynamic and real-time interactivity.
  • Integration
    Integration with some modern programming environments and languages may not be as seamless as with other plotting libraries specifically designed for those ecosystems (e.g., Matplotlib in Python).

Excelize features and specs

  • XLAM, XLSM, XLSX, XLTM, XLTX
  • Encryption and Decryption
  • Charts
    Over 53 kind of chart types and combo chart
  • Streaming API
  • Pivot Table
  • Sparkline
  • Merge Cells
  • Embed VBA

Analysis of GnuPlot

Overall verdict

  • Gnuplot is generally considered to be a good choice for those looking for a reliable and flexible plotting tool, especially if the users need robust scriptability or work across different operating systems.

Why this product is good

  • Gnuplot is a powerful, portable, and multi-platform tool capable of producing high-quality 2D and 3D plots. It supports numerous output formats and can be used interactively or in scripts. Additionally, it has a large support community and extensive documentation, making it accessible for both beginners and advanced users.

Recommended for

  • Scientists and engineers who need to visualize data across diverse platforms.
  • Users comfortable working with command-line interfaces.
  • Individuals or teams needing to generate plots through automated scripts.
  • Those looking for a free and open-source alternative to other graphing tools.

Analysis of Excelize

Overall verdict

  • Excelize is a robust, well-maintained open-source Go library for reading, writing, and manipulating Excel (XLSX/XLSM) files, making it a solid choice for Go developers who need spreadsheet functionality.

Why this product is good

  • Pure Go implementation with no external dependencies, making it easy to integrate into Go projects
  • Comprehensive feature set supporting cell styling, charts, pivot tables, images, formulas, and data validation
  • Active development and maintenance with frequent updates and a responsive community on GitHub
  • Good documentation and plenty of code examples to help developers get started quickly
  • High performance and streaming API support for handling large spreadsheets efficiently
  • Open source under a permissive BSD license, allowing free use in commercial and personal projects

Recommended for

  • Go developers who need to generate or parse Excel files programmatically
  • Backend services that produce reports, invoices, or data exports in XLSX format
  • Applications requiring advanced Excel features like charts, pivot tables, and complex styling
  • Projects that need to process large spreadsheets with efficient memory usage via streaming
  • Teams looking for a free, open-source alternative to commercial spreadsheet libraries

GnuPlot videos

Gnuplot Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - DTrace Latency Visualization in gnuplot
  • Review - Basics of Gnuplot - Make your plot look Good

Excelize videos

Excelize Tutorial in English

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Excelize ๅŸบ็ก€ๆ•™็จ‹
  • Tutorial - Reading Data from Excel using Excelize in Golang | Dr Vipin Classes
  • Review - Reports Generation using Go with Excelize and Mysql - Karen Irene Matala

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GnuPlot and Excelize)
Technical Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Spreadsheets
0 0%
100% 100
Numerical Computation
100 100%
0% 0
Excel
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using GnuPlot and Excelize. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GnuPlot should be more popular than Excelize. It has been mentiond 5 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.

GnuPlot mentions (5)

  • Question about Project Management
    To some extent it extends the concept of tasks which only can be reasonably executed after the completion of other ones (though results of branches eventually may join each other) and offers an additional assisting birds' eye visual of projects. So far, I'm aware about the documentation on worg interfacing org-taskjuggler and taskjuggler, as well as a video tutorial interfacing gnuplot instead. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How do I make a transparent background on .ps or .eps file imported to groff
    Gnuplot is a program to plot diagrams. The Commands issued to use it don't change regardless if it is used in Linux/Windows/MacOS and it comes with less dependencies than a Spread sheet, or a statistics program. This is why I started to Become comfortable with it, and venture out some of its features. Here, "conditional plot" referred to "the diagram only displays a Thing/uses a pixel if the value in the table... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Drawing graphs and diagrams
    Or, does drawing diagrams refers to plotting data, but neither using matplotlib, nor gnuplot (export to .svg, .pdf, .png; pstricks, tikz to mention a few options)? Source: over 3 years ago
  • Are specific softwares avialable that are suitable for converting different diagrams, graphs and mindmaps to latex codes?
    There may the occasion you actually need the data from a publication, and want to plot them altogether with data newly collected data in one diagram in common. An overlay, though possible, can become tricky (scaling, centering, alignment, etc.) and plotting all data in a diagram generated from scratch (gnuplot/octave, matplotlib, Origin, ...) exported as an illustration in the usual formats (.pdf/.png), or... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Introducing Graphs
    Have you looked at the graphing capabilities of Octave or Gnuplot? Gnuplot in particular has a lot of options, and a GUI for those who want it. Source: over 3 years ago

Excelize mentions (1)

  • Excelize 2.5.0 is Released โ€“ Go language API for spreadsheet (Excel) document
    Documentation website with multilingual: Arabic, German, Spanish, English, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which has been updated. Source: over 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GnuPlot and Excelize, you can also consider the following products

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Microsoft Office Excel - Microsoft Office Excel is a commercial spreadsheet application.

GeoGebra - GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for learning and teaching.

LibreOffice - Calc - LibreOffice Calc is the spreadsheet program you've always needed. A fork of OpenOffice.