CoCalc
Your best choice for teaching remote scientific courses.
CoCalc vs Google Colab:
a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
Google Colab
Colab notebooks allow you to combine executable code and rich text in a single document, along with images, HTML, LaTeX and more.
CoCalc
Google Colab
Setup
Fully managed (setup in minutes)
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)
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)
Provided file storage
Connect with Jupyter libraries (e.g. SQLAlchemy, psycopg2)
Google Drive
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)
Reactivity
Reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
No notebook scheduling
No notebook scheduling
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
Environments are reproducible by default
There is no support for reproducibility
Version history is built in
No version history
Multiple editors at the same time
No support for collaborative editors
Comments
Comments
No support for comments
No support for comments
Notebook organization
Notebook organization
View notebooks in a list
View notebooks in a list
Licensing
License
License
Open-source (GNU AGPLv3)
Proprietary
Price
Price
Free tier
Pay for compute
Free tier
Pay-per-user
Pay for compute