Software Alternatives & Startups

prism.js VS Plotly

Compare prism.js VS Plotly and see what are their differences

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prism.js logo prism.js

Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

Plotly logo Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps
  • prism.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-08-28
  • Plotly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-31

prism.js features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Prism.js is designed to be a lightweight library, minimizing performance impact on the website. It is optimized for being small in size, which aids in faster loading times.
  • Easy to Use
    It is very easy to integrate Prism.js into any web project with minimal setup required. The instructions and implementation are straightforward, making it accessible for developers.
  • Theme Customization
    Prism.js supports custom themes, allowing developers to easily match syntax highlighting styles with the design of their website or application.
  • Extensible
    The library is modular with plugins and supports language extensions. This allows developers to add just the components they need, reducing bloat and improving performance.
  • Wide Language Support
    Prism.js supports a broad array of programming languages, making it versatile for projects that require syntax highlighting across multiple coding languages.

Possible disadvantages of prism.js

  • Basic Functionality
    Prism.js focuses on simple syntax highlighting and doesn't include advanced features like IDE-level code analysis or linting, which some users might expect.
  • Limited Plugin Ecosystem
    While there are several plugins available, the ecosystem isn't as extensive as some other larger projects, which may limit customization for more advanced use cases.
  • Lacks Built-in Line Highlighting
    Some alternative libraries offer built-in advanced line highlighting features, which are not included out of the box in Prism.js, requiring additional customization.
  • No Built-in Live Code Editing
    Prism.js doesn’t support live code editing natively, which may be a limitation for users needing an interactive coding environment, such as in educational tools.
  • Supports Web Only
    Prism.js is optimized specifically for web use, which might be a limitation if you need syntax highlighting for different environments or formats, like desktop applications.

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.

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.

prism.js videos

Prism.js - How to show html css javascript code syntax on your own website

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

Category Popularity

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App Reviews
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Data Visualization
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Customer Feedback
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Charting Libraries
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User comments

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Reviews

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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.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Plotly should be more popular than prism.js. 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.

prism.js mentions (22)

  • Prism
    It reminded me of the code highlighter[0], and the ORM Prisma[1]. [0] https://prismjs.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • 1Password Breaks Syntax Highlighting On The Internet
    Starting sometime in early December of 2025, a change was rolled out to the 1Password browser extension that began injecting prism.js onto every site and targeting every block it encountered. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Artisanal Handcrafted Git Repositories
    The site uses Astro (https://astro.build/) and the code blocks are generated using Shiki (https://shiki.style/). As Shiki generates the HTML and CSS at build-time instead of requiring runtime JS like alternatives like Prism (https://prismjs.com/#basic-usage), it's actually quite performant. I think it's unlikely that a couple of hundred lines with some empty spans in is going to cause performance issues – imo it's... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Build A Full-Stack Application With AnalogJS
    First step it to open src/app/app.config.ts, enable markdown file support, and add a syntax highlighter. You can pick between Prism or Shiki, both are great, but for this example, we’re rolling with Prism. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Supercharge Your Projects: Must-Have JavaScript Plugins for Developers 🚀
    Explore Prism.js for more themes and plugins! - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

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 / 6 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!🤓
    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 / almost 2 years 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

What are some alternatives?

When comparing prism.js and Plotly, you can also consider the following products

highlight.js - Highlight.js is a syntax highlighter written in JavaScript. It works in the browser as well as on the server.

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.

Pygments - Generic syntax highlighter suitable for use in code hosting, forums, wikis or other applications...

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

Shiki - A beautiful syntax highlighter based on TextMate grammar, accurate and powerful.

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.