Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Plotly VS date-fns

Compare Plotly VS date-fns and see what are their differences

Plotly logo Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps

date-fns logo date-fns

date-fns provides the most comprehensive yet simple and consistent toolset for manipulating JavaScript dates in a browser & Node.js.
  • Plotly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-31
  • date-fns Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-30

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.

date-fns features and specs

  • Lightweight
    date-fns is designed to be lightweight, with a modular structure that allows developers to only import the functions they need, reducing overall bundle size.
  • Modular
    The library is highly modular, which means you can include only the specific functionalities you need, leading to better optimization and faster load times for your applications.
  • Immutable
    date-fns functions operate in an immutable way, meaning they do not change the original date objects but return new date objects, avoiding potential side effects.
  • Comprehensive
    date-fns provides a comprehensive set of date-related functions, covering a wide range of use cases from simple date manipulation to complex date calculations.
  • Localization
    The library has built-in support for internationalization and localization, making it easier to format dates in various locales and languages.
  • Ease of Use
    With a consistent and straightforward API, date-fns is easy to learn and use, making it accessible to both beginners and experienced developers.
  • Well-maintained
    date-fns is actively maintained with frequent updates and a supportive community, ensuring it stays up-to-date with the latest JavaScript standards and practices.

Possible disadvantages of date-fns

  • Not as Rich as Moment.js
    Compared to Moment.js, date-fns lacks some of the more advanced date manipulation features and utilities, potentially requiring additional work for certain use cases.
  • Learning Curve
    While simpler than some alternatives, there is still a learning curve to fully understand and utilize the modular approach and various functions provided by date-fns.
  • No Time Zones Support
    Date-fns does not provide built-in support for time zones, which can be a limitation for applications that require robust time zone handling.
  • Function Overhead
    The functional approach, while flexible, can lead to a higher overhead in function calls compared to some object-oriented approaches, potentially impacting performance in heavily date-manipulation-centric applications.
  • Dependency Management
    Because of its modularity, managing imports and ensuring all necessary parts of the library are included can sometimes be cumbersome and error-prone.
  • Interoperability
    Interoperability with other date libraries is not always straightforward, and transitioning from libraries like Moment.js can require significant code changes.

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

date-fns videos

No date-fns videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Plotly and date-fns)
Data Visualization
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
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 date-fns

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.

date-fns Reviews

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, date-fns should be more popular than Plotly. It has been mentiond 77 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 (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 / about 2 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 / 4 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 / 5 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 / 11 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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date-fns mentions (77)

  • Supporting RTL language layout in your web application
    You can also choose to use a library like date-fns to handle date and time localization. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Say Goodbye to JavaScript’s DST Date Confusion
    These issues can also occur in date-time libraries such as moment.js, date-fns, Day.js, and luxon. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Day 8: D-8 🎱
    Do you know how many days left till Christmas? Well this little handy library certainly does! - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Release Radar · September 2024: Major updates from the open source community
    JavaScript seems to be the flavour of the month, and here's another JavaScript project for you. date-fns provides the most comprehensive and consistent toolset for manipulating JavaScript dates in a browser & Node.js. The latest version comes ten years after the very first release. There are no breaking changes in the release, and it comes with added time zone support, meaning you can select which time zone to... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Date Formatting: Carbon, date-fns, and Vanilla JS
    Working with dates and times is an essential part of web development. Whether you're building a blog, an e-commerce site, or a personal project, handling and formatting dates correctly can greatly enhance user experience. In this blog, we'll explore date formatting using three different methods: Carbon (PHP), date-fns (JavaScript), and Vanilla JS Date. We'll provide examples for each to help you understand how to... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Plotly and date-fns, 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.

Moment.js - Parse, validate, manipulate, and display dates in JavaScript

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

Day.js - 2kB JavaScript date utility library

Highcharts - A charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application

Luxon - Application and Data, Libraries, and Javascript Utilities & Libraries