Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Plotly VS Binder

Compare Plotly VS Binder and see what are their differences

Plotly logo Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps

Binder logo Binder

Turn a Git repo into a collection of interactive notebooks
  • Plotly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-31
  • Binder Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-22

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.

Binder features and specs

  • Accessibility
    Binder is completely web-based, allowing users to access and run Jupyter notebooks directly from their browsers without needing to install any software locally.
  • Cost-effective
    The service is free to use, which makes it accessible for educational purposes, research collaborations, and demonstrations without the financial burden.
  • Immediate Sharing
    Binder allows for quick sharing of interactive code and analysis by simply providing a link to the Binder instance, facilitating easy collaboration and dissemination.
  • Reproducibility
    Binder can generate environments based on configuration files, ensuring that analyses are reproducible and can be executed with the same dependencies and settings across different systems.

Possible disadvantages of Binder

  • Performance Limitations
    Binder instances are limited in terms of computational resources and runtime, which can be a constraint for projects requiring extensive computational power or long-running processes.
  • Session Persistence
    Instances are temporary, meaning any changes made during a session are lost once the session ends, which can be problematic for ongoing work if not backed up elsewhere.
  • Dependency Restrictions
    While Binder supports many off-the-shelf environments, complex dependencies or custom environments might require more intricate configuration and are not guaranteed to work perfectly.
  • Scalability
    There might be scalability issues for high demand usage, especially in educational settings or large conferences, as the free tier can be saturated, affecting performance and availability.

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.

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

Binder videos

gc2b vs Underworks Binder Comparison - which one should you buy???

More videos:

  • Review - Non-Binary People Try Popular Chest Binders
  • Review - FtM | Transgender Chest-Binder Guide! (GC2B, UnderWorks, Amazone, Big Chested!)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Plotly and Binder)
Data Visualization
95 95%
5% 5
Data Science And Machine Learning
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Data Science Notebooks
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 Plotly and Binder

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.

Binder Reviews

We have no reviews of Binder yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Binder might be a bit more popular than Plotly. We know about 36 links to it since March 2021 and only 33 links to Plotly. 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.

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 / 7 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 / about 1 year 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
View more

Binder mentions (36)

  • Accessible open textbooks in math-heavy disciplines
    Textbooks, though? Interactive is what they want. How can we make textbooks interactive? It used to be that textbooks were to be copied down from; copy by hand from the textbook. To engage and entertain this generation. ManimCE, scriptable 3d simulators with test assertions, Thebelab, Jupyter Book docs > "Launch into interactive computing interfaces" > BinderHub ( https://mybinder.org ), JupyterHub, Colab,... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • RStudio: Integrated development environment (IDE) for R
    The closest Python equivalent to RStudio is the JupyterLab Desktop app[1,2], which I highly recommend. I've entirely switched to using it for teaching, and it is a godsend, since it works the same way across platforms (win/mac/linux), installs its own Python interpreter independent of any system Python the student might have, and even comes with NumPy/SciPy/Pandas/Seaborn/statsmodels already installed, which... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Binder - Turn a Git repo into a collection of interactive notebooks. It is a free public service. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Best tools to teach python in a classroom
    I would use https://mybinder.org/ if you can't install anything. It's supported by NumFocus but otherwise runs on donations. You specify requirements in code and they build a docker image from your github repository. I think they should be able to download their notebook and submit it to you - it's been awhile since I used it. But I think they need to have a single person doing the typing. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Is anyone using Cloud Dev Environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?
    You can use Binder https://mybinder.org . If the students have Gmail account, try Google Colab. Pretty easy to use. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Plotly and Binder, you can also consider the following products

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.

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.

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

Workomo - Find out everything about people before you meet

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

nbviewer.org - Rackspace server host Jupyter Notebooks from your github repo