CoCalc
Your best choice for teaching remote scientific courses.
CoCalc vs Observable:
a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
Observable
Make sense of the world with data, together. Explore, visualize, and analyze data. Collaborate with the community. Learn and be inspired. Share insights with the world.
CoCalc
Observable
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
Not Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
JS
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 JS libraries (e.g. REST APIs)
Connect to databases (MySQL, Postgres)
Connect to data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake)
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)
JS data visualization (e.g. D3, Vega)
Reactivity
Reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
Full, realtime reactivity
No notebook scheduling
No notebook scheduling
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
Environments are reproducible by default
Environments are reproducible by default
Execution is reproducible by default
Version history is built in
Version history is built in
Multiple editors at the same time
Multiple editors at the same time
Comments
Comments
No support for comments
Comment on items within a notebook
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
Free trial (1 month)
Pay-per-user