
Pluto.jl vs VS Code:
a side-by-side comparison for 2023
Comparing two data science notebooks.

Writing a notebook is not just about writing the final document — Pluto empowers the experiments and discoveries that are essential to getting there.

VS Code
WebsiteVisual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor. It supports working with Jupyter Notebooks natively, as well as through Python code files.
Pluto.jl
VS Code
Setup
No, you must host it yourself
No, you must host it yourself
Can you self-host?
Can you self-host?
You can self-host (setup in hours)
You can self-host (setup in hours)
Features
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Not Jupyter-compatible
Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
Julia
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
Unknown
Connect with Jupyter libraries (e.g. SQLAlchemy, psycopg2)
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
Unknown
Jupyter data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib, Altair, Plotly)
Reactivity
Reactivity
Full, realtime reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
No notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
Execution is reproducible by default
There is no support for reproducibility
File-based (use Git)
File-based (use Git)
File-based (use Git)
File-based (use Git)
Comments
Comments
File-based (use GitHub)
File-based (use GitHub)
Notebook organization
Notebook organization
File-based
File-based
Licensing
Open-source (MIT)
Open-source (MIT)
Price
Price
Free
Free
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Alternatives to Pluto.jl and VS Code
Compare Pluto.jl and VS Code with other data science notebook tools.
Tool | Setup | Jupyter compatibility | Languages | Data visualization | Collaborative editing | Pricing | License |
---|
Pluto.jl | Self-hosted | None | Julia | Unknown | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VS Code | Self-hosted | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
Deepnote | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter, SQL | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Amazon Sagemaker | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | Limited collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Jupyter | Self-hosted | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
Google Colab | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | Limited collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Hex | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter, SQL | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Databricks Notebooks | Self-hosted or fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
DataCamp Workspace | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter, SQL | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
JupyterLab | Self-hosted | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
CoCalc | Self-hosted or fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Open source |
Hyperquery | Fully managed | None | Python, SQL | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Jetbrains Datalore | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Kaggle | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | Limited collaboration | Free | Proprietary |
Nextjournal | Fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Noteable | Self-hosted or fully managed | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter, SQL | Visualize with code or UI | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
nteract | Self-hosted | Jupyter-compatible | Jupyter | Visualize with code | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
Observable | Fully managed | None | JS | Visualize with code | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Query.me | Fully managed | None | SQL | Visualization UI builder | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Mode Notebooks | Fully managed | None | SQL, R, Python | Visualization UI builder | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Unknown | Proprietary |
Querybook | Self-hosted | None | Python | Visualization UI builder | Realtime collaboration | Free | Open source |
Zeppelin | Self-hosted | None | Python, SQL, Spark | Unknown | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
Count | Fully managed | None | SQL | Visualization UI builder | Realtime collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Husprey | Fully managed | None | SQL | Visualization UI builder | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free and paid options | Proprietary |
Polynote | Self-hosted | None | Scala, Python | Unknown | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
Zepl | Fully managed | Unknown | Python, R | Unknown | Realtime collaboration | Unknown | Proprietary |