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

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor. It supports working with Jupyter Notebooks natively, as well as through Python code files.

Deepnote is a new kind of data notebook that’s built for collaboration — Jupyter compatible, works magically in the cloud, and sharing is as easy as sending a link.
VS Code
Deepnote
Setup
No, you must host it yourself
Fully managed (setup in minutes)
Can you self-host?
Can you self-host?
You can self-host (setup in hours)
No, you must use a managed offering
Features
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Jupyter-compatible
Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
SQL
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
Connect with Jupyter libraries (e.g. SQLAlchemy, psycopg2)
Connect with Jupyter libraries (e.g. SQLAlchemy, psycopg2)
Connect to data warehouses (AWS, GCP, etc.)
Connect to databases (Postgres, MongoDB, etc.)
Provided file storage
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
Jupyter data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib, Altair, Plotly)
Jupyter data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib, Altair, Plotly)
UI for building charts
Reactivity
Reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Notebook scheduling is built in
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
There is no support for reproducibility
Environments are reproducible by default
Run notebooks in containers
File-based (use Git)
Version history is built in
File-based (use Git)
Multiple editors at the same time
Comments
Comments
File-based (use GitHub)
Comment on items within a notebook
Notebook organization
Notebook organization
File-based
View notebooks in a tree, like a wiki
Licensing
Open-source (MIT)
Proprietary
Price
Price
Free
Free tier
Pay for compute
Pay-per-user
Try Deepnote today
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Alternatives to VS Code and Deepnote
Compare VS Code and Deepnote with other data science notebook tools.
Tool | Setup | Jupyter compatibility | Languages | Data visualization | Collaborative editing | Pricing | License |
---|
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 |
Pluto.jl | Self-hosted | None | Julia | Unknown | File-based or asynchronous collaboration | Free | Open source |
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 |