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SciPy VS Matplotlib

Compare SciPy VS Matplotlib and see what are their differences

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SciPy logo SciPy

SciPy is a Python-based ecosystem of open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering. 

Matplotlib logo Matplotlib

matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces publication quality figures in a variety...
  • SciPy Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-26
  • Matplotlib Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-14

SciPy features and specs

  • Comprehensive Library
    SciPy provides a wide range of scientific and technical computing tools, including modules for optimization, integration, interpolation, eigenvalue problems, algebraic equations, differential equations, statistics, and more.
  • Interoperability
    SciPy is built on top of NumPy, which means it naturally dovetails with other scientific computing libraries in the Python ecosystem, facilitating ease of integration and use in conjunction with libraries like Matplotlib and Pandas.
  • Active Community
    SciPy boasts a large, active community of developers and users, which provides extensive documentation, forums, and regular updates and improvements to the library.
  • Open-source
    Being an open-source library, SciPy promotes collaboration and adaptation, allowing users to contribute to its development and modify its tools to suit specific needs.

Possible disadvantages of SciPy

  • Complexity
    For beginners in scientific computing or programming, the comprehensive nature of SciPy can be overwhelming due to its broad range of functionalities and somewhat steep learning curve.
  • Performance Limitations
    Being a high-level library, SciPy may not be as performant as low-level implementations or specialized tools for very demanding computational tasks or large-scale data processing.
  • Dependency on NumPy
    While SciPy's reliance on NumPy ensures compatibility and ease of use within the Python ecosystem, it also means that its performance and limits are tied to those of NumPy.
  • Windows Limitations
    Some functions and modules of SciPy may not work as efficiently or might encounter compatibility issues when run on Windows operating systems compared to Unix-based systems.

Matplotlib features and specs

  • Versatility
    Matplotlib can generate a wide variety of plots, ranging from simple line plots to complex 3D plots. This versatility makes it a go-to library for many scientific and technical visualizations.
  • Customization
    It offers extensive customization options for virtually every element of a plot, including colors, labels, line styles, and more, allowing users to tailor plots to meet specific needs.
  • Integrations
    Matplotlib integrates well with other Python libraries such as NumPy, Pandas, and SciPy, making it easier to plot data directly from these sources.
  • Community and Documentation
    It has a large, active community and comprehensive documentation that includes tutorials, examples, and detailed references, which can help users solve problems and improve their plot-making skills.
  • Interactivity
    Matplotlib supports interactive plots, which can be embedded in Jupyter notebooks and GUIs, allowing for dynamic data exploration and presentation.
  • Publication-Quality
    The library is capable of producing high-quality, publication-ready graphics that meet the stringent requirements of academic journals and professional presentations.

Possible disadvantages of Matplotlib

  • Complexity
    While Matplotlib offers extensive customization, it can be complex and sometimes unintuitive for beginners, requiring a steep learning curve to master all its functionality.
  • Performance
    Rendering a large number of plots or handling very large datasets can be slow, making Matplotlib less suitable for real-time data visualization.
  • Modern Aesthetics
    Out-of-the-box plots from Matplotlib can look somewhat dated compared to those from newer plotting libraries like Seaborn or Plotly, requiring additional customization to achieve a modern look.
  • 3D Plots
    Although Matplotlib supports 3D plotting, its capabilities are relatively limited and less sophisticated compared to specialized 3D plotting libraries.
  • Size and Structure
    The package is relatively large and can be slow to import. Its extensive structure can make finding specific functions and understanding the overall architecture challenging.

Analysis of Matplotlib

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Matplotlib is a good library for data visualization, particularly for users who require a versatile and powerful plotting solution in Python.

Why this product is good

  • Matplotlib is highly regarded due to its extensive customization options, versatility in creating a wide range of static, animated, and interactive plots, and its large user community and support. It integrates well with other scientific libraries in Python, making it a staple for data visualization. The library is also open-source and frequently updated, ensuring it remains a reliable choice for users.

Recommended for

  • Data scientists and analysts needing to create detailed, customized visual representations of their data.
  • Researchers and engineers looking for a comprehensive plotting library that supports scientific and engineering formats.
  • Python developers who require integration with other scientific computing libraries like NumPy and Pandas.

SciPy videos

+ Add

Numerical Computing With NumPy Tutorial | SciPy 2020 | Eric Olsen

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Land on Vector Spaces: Practical Linear Algebra with Python | SciPy 2019 Tutorial | L Barba, T Wang

Matplotlib videos

+ Add

Learn Matplotlib in 6 minutes | Matplotlib Python Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SciPy and Matplotlib)

SciPy

Matplotlib

Data Science And Machine Learning
35 35%
Data Science And Machine Learning
65% 65
Technical Computing
23 23%
Technical Computing
77% 77
Data Science Tools
100 100%
Data Science Tools
0% 0
Data Visualization
0 0%
Data Visualization
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 SciPy and Matplotlib

SciPy Reviews

25 Python Frameworks to Master
SciPy provides a collection of algorithms and functions built on top of the NumPy. It helps to perform common scientific and engineering tasks such as optimization, signal processing, integration, linear algebra, and more.
Source: kinsta.com
Top 8 Image-Processing Python Libraries Used in Machine Learning
Scipy is used for mathematical and scientific computations but can also perform multi-dimensional image processing using the submodule scipy.ndimage. It provides functions to operate on n-dimensional Numpy arrays and at the end of the day images are just that.
Source: neptune.ai
Top Python Libraries For Image Processing In 2021
SciPy is primarily used for mathematical and scientific computations, but sometimes it can also be used for basic image manipulation and processing tasks using the submodule scipy.ndimage.At the end of the day, images are just multidimensional arrays, SciPy provides a set of functions that are used to operate n-dimensional Numpy operations. SciPy provides some basic image...
Source: www.analyticsvidhya.com

Matplotlib Reviews

25 Python Frameworks to Master
Matplotlib is a widely used tool for data visualization in Python. It provides an object-oriented API for embedding plots into applications.
Source: kinsta.com
5 Best Python Libraries For Data Visualization in 2023
You can use this library for multiple purposes such as generating plots, bar charts, histograms, power spectra, stemplots, pie charts, and more. The best thing about Matplotlib is you just have to write a few lines of code and it handles the rest by itself. Metaplotilib focuses on static images for publication along with interactive figures using toolkits like Qt and GTK.
Source: www.technotification.com
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Matplotlib is an open source Python plotting library that's used to read, import and visualize data in analytics applications. Data scientists and other users can create static, animated and interactive data visualizations with Matplotlib, using it in Python scripts, the Python and IPython shells, Jupyter Notebook, web application servers and various GUI toolkits.
Source: searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com
Top Python Libraries For Image Processing In 2021
Matplotlib is primarily used for 2D visualizations such as scatter plots, bar graphs, histograms, and many more, but we can also use it for image processing. It is effective to get information out of an image. It doesn’t support all file formats.
Source: www.analyticsvidhya.com
Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization
Matplotlib is a data visualization library and 2-D plotting library of Python It was initially released in 2003 and it is the most popular and widely-used plotting library in the Python community. It comes with an interactive environment across multiple platforms. Matplotlib can be used in Python scripts, the Python and IPython shells, the Jupyter notebook, web application...
Source: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Matplotlib should be more popular than SciPy. It has been mentiond 110 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.

SciPy mentions (17)

  • Intro to Ray on GKE
    The Python Library components of Ray could be considered analogous to solutions like numpy, scipy, and pandas (which is most analogous to the Ray Data library specifically). As a framework and distributed computing solution, Ray could be used in place of a tool like Apache Spark or Python Dask. It’s also worthwhile to note that Ray Clusters can be used as a distributed computing solution within Kubernetes, as... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Video Generation with Python
    Python has become a popular programming language for different applications, including data science, artificial intelligence, and web development. But, did you know creating and rendering fully customized videos with Python is also possible? At Stack Builders, we have successfully used Python libraries such as MoviePy, SciPy, and ImageMagick to generate videos with animations, text, and images. In this article, we... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Beginning Python: Project Management With PDM
    A majority of software in the modern world is built upon various third party packages. These packages help offload work that would otherwise be rather tedious. This includes interacting with cloud APIs, developing scientific applications, or even creating web applications. As you gain experience in python you'll be using more and more of these packages developed by others to power your own code. In this example... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Understanding Cosine Similarity in Python with Scikit-Learn
    SciPy: a library used for scientific and technical computing. It has a function that can calculate the cosine distance, which equals 1 minus the cosine similarity. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • PSA: You don't need fancy stuff to do good work.
    Python's pandas, NumPy, and SciPy libraries offer powerful functionality for data manipulation, while matplotlib, seaborn, and plotly provide versatile tools for creating visualizations. Similarly, in R, you can use dplyr, tidyverse, and data.table for data manipulation, and ggplot2, lattice, and shiny for visualization. These packages enable you to create insightful visualizations and perform statistical analyses... Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Matplotlib mentions (110)

  • Top 5 GitHub Repositories for Data Science in 2026
    The book introduces the core libraries essential for working with data in Python: particularly IPython, NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Scikit-Learn, and related packages Familiarity with Python as a language is assumed; if you need a quick introduction to the language itself, see the free companion project, A…. - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • Streamlit Chart Libraries Comparison: A Frontend Developer's Guide
    Matplotlib is Python's visualization standard:. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Why Use Matplotlib for Data Visualization?
    Matplotlib is a foundational and incredibly versatile plotting library in Python, making it a go-to choice for many data scientists and analysts. While many data visualization libraries exist, Matplotlib offers some significant advantages that make it indispensable. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Python for Data Visualization: Best Tools and Practices
    Matplotlib is the backbone of Python data visualization. It’s a flexible, reliable library for creating static plots. Whether you're making simple bar charts or complex graphs, Matplotlib allows extensive customization. You can adjust nearly every aspect of a plot to suit your needs. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Build a Competitive Intelligence Tool Powered by AI
    Add data visualization to make it actionable for your business using pandas.pydata.org and matplotlib.org. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing SciPy and Matplotlib, you can also consider the following products

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

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

GnuPlot - Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility.

MATLAB - A high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming

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

Plotly - Low-Code Data Apps

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