Google Colab
WebsiteColab notebooks allow you to combine executable code and rich text in a single document, along with images, HTML, LaTeX and more.
Google Colab vs Mode Notebooks:
a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
Mode Notebooks
WebsiteNative R & Python Notebooks. From SQL, explore your analysis using R or Python Notebooks.
Google Colab
Mode Notebooks
Setup
Fully managed (setup in minutes)
Fully managed (setup in minutes)
Can you self-host?
Can you self-host?
No, you must use a managed offering
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)
SQL
R
Python
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)
Google Drive
Connect to databases (MariaDB, PostgreSQL, etc.)
Connect to data warehouses (Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, etc.)
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
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
No notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling is built in
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
There is no support for reproducibility
Environments are reproducible by default
No version history
No version history
No support for collaborative editors
Multiple editors, one at a time (asynchronous)
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
Proprietary
Proprietary
Price
Price
Free tier
Pay-per-user
Pay for compute
Unknown