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Plotly VS Bokeh

Compare Plotly VS Bokeh and see what are their differences

Modelence
Create production-ready applications with zero code featured
Contents:
  1. ยป Base Details
  2. ยป Videos
  3. ยป Reviews
  4. ยป Alternatives

Plotly logo Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps

Bokeh logo Bokeh

Bokeh visualization library, documentation site.
  • Plotly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-31
  • Bokeh Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01

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.

Bokeh features and specs

  • Interactive Visualizations
    Bokeh is designed specifically for creating interactive and highly customizable visualizations, making it suitable for engaging data exploration.
  • Python Integration
    Bokeh integrates well with the Python ecosystem, allowing direct use of pandas, NumPy, and other Python libraries, facilitating seamless data manipulation and visualization.
  • Web Compatibility
    Bokeh generates plots that are ready to be embedded into web applications, making it a powerful tool for creating dashboards and interactive reports.
  • Server Functionality
    Bokeh provides a server component that allows users to build and deploy sophisticated interactive applications using just Python.
  • Variety of Plotting Options
    Bokeh offers a wide range of plotting capabilities including charts, maps, and streamgraphs, enabling users to create complex visual stories.

Possible disadvantages of Bokeh

  • Learning Curve
    Bokeh may have a steeper learning curve for users unfamiliar with JavaScript or those looking for a very simple or quick plotting tool.
  • Performance Issues
    When dealing with very large datasets, Bokeh might suffer from performance issues, as it is primarily client-side rendering.
  • Limited 3D Capabilities
    Bokeh's support for 3D plotting is limited compared to other visualization libraries like Plotly, potentially restricting its use for applications that require 3D visualizations.
  • Documentation and Community Size
    While Bokeh has good documentation, its user community is smaller compared to more mature libraries like Matplotlib, which can mean fewer resources and third-party support options.

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.

Analysis of Bokeh

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Bokeh is a good choice for data visualization, particularly if you need to create interactive, high-quality plots that can be shared and displayed on the web.

Why this product is good

  • Bokeh is a powerful and interactive visualization library for Python that is known for its ability to create elegant, scalable, and versatile graphics. It is especially useful for creating web-ready, interactive plots that can be easily embedded into web pages or applications. Bokeh is praised for its intuitive and flexible interface, making it a great choice for both simple and complex visualizations.

Recommended for

  • Data scientists who need to create interactive visualizations for data exploration.
  • Web developers looking to incorporate dynamic plots into their applications.
  • Educators and researchers who need to present data interactively in a web-based format.
  • Anyone seeking a versatile tool compatible with various data formats and capable of producing real-time streaming plots.

Plotly videos

+ Add

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

Bokeh videos

+ Add

"Bokeh" - Netflix Film Review

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Plotly and Bokeh)

Plotly

Bokeh

Data Visualization
82 82%
Data Visualization
18% 18
Charting Libraries
68 68%
Charting Libraries
32% 32
Data Dashboard
74 74%
Data Dashboard
26% 26
Javascript UI Libraries
66 66%
Javascript UI Libraries
34% 34

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 Bokeh

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.
Source: www.technotification.com
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...
Source: www.geeksforgeeks.org
5 top picks for JavaScript chart libraries
Plotly is a graphing library thatโ€™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.
Source: blog.logrocket.com

Bokeh Reviews

Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization
Pygal is a Python data visualization library that is made for creating sexy charts! (According to their website!) While Pygal is similar to Plotly or Bokeh in that it creates data visualization charts that can be embedded into web pages and accessed using a web browser, a primary difference is that it can output charts in the form of SVGโ€™s or Scalable Vector Graphics. These...
Source: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Plotly should be more popular than Bokeh. It has been mentiond 34 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.

Plotly mentions (34)

  • How to Analyze 47 Million Hacker News Posts: A Data Scientist's Dream Dataset Just Got Better
    Let's dive into some practical examples. First, you'll need to set up your environment with the right tools. I recommend using pandas for data manipulation and plotly for visualization. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • 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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year ago
  • Build a Stock Dashboard in less than 40 lines of Python code!๐Ÿค“
    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 / over 1 year 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 2 years ago
View more

Bokeh mentions (5)

  • [OC] Chemical Diversity of The GlobalChem Common Chemical Universe
    Visualization: https://docs.bokeh.org/en/latest/. Source: about 4 years ago
  • Profiling workflows with the Amazon Genomics CLI
    Now that we can get task timing information in a consistent manner, letโ€™s do some plotting. For this, Iโ€™m going to use Bokeh which generates nice interactive plots. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
  • 10 Python Libraries For Data Visualization
    Bokeh The Bokeh library is native to Python and is mainly used to create interactive, web-ready plots, which can be easily output as HTML documents, JSON objects, or interactive web applications. Like ggplot, its concepts are also based on the Grammar of Graphics. It has the added advantage of managing real-time data and streaming. This library can be used for creating common charts such as histograms, bar plots,... - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
  • Graphic library Bokeh is underrated and underdocumented
    It's not in the least bit "underrated" and it's documentation is extensive. Source: about 5 years ago
  • Help with Bokeh Interactive Plot
    Hi guys! I am currently working on a project to enrich my Master thesis with some interactive plots. I have been using the Bokeh library to make a standalone application, which I was then planning to deploy in Heroku. You can find the code in this repository. But I will also add it at the bottom of the post. Source: over 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Plotly and Bokeh, 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.

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

Tableau - Tableau can help anyone see and understand their data. Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.

NVD3 - This project is an attempt to build re-usable charts and chart components for d3.

Google Charts - Interactive charts for browsers and mobile devices.

CanvasJS - HTML5 JavaScript, jQuery, Angular, React Charts for Data Visualization

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