Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Scikit-learn VS XGBoost

Compare Scikit-learn VS XGBoost and see what are their differences

Scikit-learn logo Scikit-learn

scikit-learn (formerly scikits.learn) is an open source machine learning library for the Python programming language.

XGBoost logo XGBoost

XGBoost is an optimized distributed gradient boosting library designed to be highly efficient, flexible and portable.
  • Scikit-learn Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-05-06
  • XGBoost Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

Scikit-learn features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Scikit-learn provides a high-level interface for common machine learning algorithms, making it easy for beginners and professionals to implement complex models with minimal coding.
  • Extensive Documentation and Community Support
    The library has comprehensive documentation and a large, active community. This makes it easy to find tutorials, examples, and solutions to common problems.
  • Integration with Other Libraries
    Scikit-learn integrates well with other scientific computing libraries such as NumPy, SciPy, and pandas, allowing for seamless data manipulation and analysis.
  • Variety of Algorithms
    It offers a wide array of machine learning algorithms for tasks such as classification, regression, clustering, and dimensionality reduction.
  • Performance
    Designed with performance in mind, many of the algorithms are optimized and some even support multicore processing.

Possible disadvantages of Scikit-learn

  • Limited Deep Learning Support
    Scikit-learn is primarily focused on traditional machine learning algorithms and does not offer support for deep learning models, unlike libraries like TensorFlow or PyTorch.
  • Not Ideal for Large-Scale Data
    While Scikit-learn performs well for moderate-sized datasets, it may not be the best choice for extremely large datasets or big data applications.
  • Lack of Online Learning Algorithms
    The library has limited support for online learning algorithms, which are useful for scenarios where data arrives in a stream and model needs to be updated incrementally.
  • Less Flexibility in Customization
    It can be less flexible compared to lower-level libraries when highly customized or specific implementations are needed.
  • Dependency Overhead
    Scikit-learn relies on several other Python libraries like NumPy and SciPy, which might require users to manage multiple dependencies.

XGBoost features and specs

  • Efficiency
    XGBoost is designed to be highly efficient and optimizes both compute and memory resources, which speeds up training significantly compared to other boosting algorithms.
  • Scalability
    The algorithm scales well with large datasets, handling millions of examples and features with ease due to its advanced parallel computation capabilities.
  • Regularization
    XGBoost introduces L1 (Lasso) and L2 (Ridge) regularization to help avoid overfitting, providing an edge over many other algorithms by optimizing model generalization.
  • Flexibility
    It supports a variety of objective functions and evaluation metrics, allowing it to be adapted to different model requirements quickly.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    XGBoost is available on multiple platforms, including integration with popular data science languages like Python, R, Julia, and more, making it highly accessible.

Possible disadvantages of XGBoost

  • Complexity
    Due to numerous parameters and options, tuning XGBoost can become complex and time-consuming, especially for users not familiar with boosting algorithms.
  • Training Time
    Even though XGBoost is efficient, for some smaller datasets, the overhead of its advanced features may lead to longer training times compared to simpler models.
  • Interpretability
    Like many ensemble techniques, models built with XGBoost can be difficult to interpret, which makes it challenging to extract insights and understand the underlying data patterns.
  • Memory Usage
    While optimized for performance, XGBoost can still require significant memory resources for large datasets, which might be a limitation in memory-constrained environments.
  • Sensitivity to Hyperparameters
    The performance of XGBoost heavily depends on the correct tuning of its hyperparameters, and finding optimal settings can be challenging without experience and knowledge.

Scikit-learn videos

Learning Scikit-Learn (AI Adventures)

More videos:

  • Review - Python Machine Learning Review | Learn python for machine learning. Learn Scikit-learn.

XGBoost videos

XGBoost Part 3: Mathematical Details

More videos:

  • Review - XGBoost A Scalable Tree Boosting System June 02, 2016
  • Review - Free Udemy Course - CatBoost vs XGBoost - Classification and Regression Modeling with Python

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Scikit-learn and XGBoost)
Data Science And Machine Learning
Data Science Tools
97 97%
3% 3
Python Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Business & Commerce
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 Scikit-learn and XGBoost

Scikit-learn Reviews

15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Scikit-learn is an open source machine learning library for Python that's built on the SciPy and NumPy scientific computing libraries, plus Matplotlib for plotting data. It supports both supervised and unsupervised machine learning and includes numerous algorithms and models, called estimators in scikit-learn parlance. Additionally, it provides functionality for model...

XGBoost Reviews

We have no reviews of XGBoost yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Scikit-learn seems to be a lot more popular than XGBoost. While we know about 31 links to Scikit-learn, we've tracked only 1 mention of XGBoost. 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.

Scikit-learn mentions (31)

  • Must-Know 2025 Developer’s Roadmap and Key Programming Trends
    Python’s Growth in Data Work and AI: Python continues to lead because of its easy-to-read style and the huge number of libraries available for tasks from data work to artificial intelligence. Tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch make it a must-have. Whether you’re experienced or just starting, Python’s clear style makes it a good choice for diving into machine learning. Actionable Tip: If you’re new to Python,... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • 🚀 Launching a High-Performance DistilBERT-Based Sentiment Analysis Model for Steam Reviews 🎮🤖
    Scikit-learn (optional): Useful for additional training or evaluation tasks. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Essential Deep Learning Checklist: Best Practices Unveiled
    How to Accomplish: Utilize data splitting tools in libraries like Scikit-learn to partition your dataset. Make sure the split mirrors the real-world distribution of your data to avoid biased evaluations. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • How to Build a Logistic Regression Model: A Spam-filter Tutorial
    Online Courses: Coursera: "Machine Learning" by Andrew Ng EdX: "Introduction to Machine Learning" by MIT Tutorials: Scikit-learn documentation: https://scikit-learn.org/ Kaggle Learn: https://www.kaggle.com/learn Books: "Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras & TensorFlow" by Aurélien Géron "The Elements of Statistical Learning" by Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman By... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Link Prediction With node2vec in Physics Collaboration Network
    Firstly, we need a connection to Memgraph so we can get edges, split them into two parts (train set and test set). For edge splitting, we will use scikit-learn. In order to make a connection towards Memgraph, we will use gqlalchemy. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
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XGBoost mentions (1)

  • CS Internship Questions
    By the way, most of the time XGBoost works just as well for projects, would not recommend applying deep learning to every single problem you come across, it's something Stanford CS really likes to showcase when it's well known (1) that sometimes "smaller"/less complex models can perform just as well or have their own interpretive advantages and (2) it is well known within ML and DS communities that deep learning... Source: almost 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Scikit-learn and XGBoost, you can also consider the following products

Pandas - Pandas is an open source library providing high-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools for the Python.

Open Text Magellan - OpenText Magellan - the power of AI in a pre-wired platform that augments decision making and accelerates your business. Learn more.

OpenCV - OpenCV is the world's biggest computer vision library

Equally AI - The first true 'all-in-one' web accessibility solution to meet and exceed international web accessibility standards and government regulations.

NumPy - NumPy is the fundamental package for scientific computing with Python

Google Cloud TPU - Custom-built for machine learning workloads, Cloud TPUs accelerate training and inference at scale.