Jupyter vs Polynote: a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
Jupyter
Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. There's a number of vendors offering Jupyter notebooks as a managed service.
Polynote
Polynote is a different kind of notebook. It supports mixing multiple languages in one notebook, and sharing data between them seamlessly. It encourages reproducible notebooks with its immutable data model.
Jupyter
Polynote
Setup
Is it managed?
Is it managed?
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?
Jupyter-compatible
Not Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
Scala
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)
Unknown
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
Jupyter data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib, Altair, Plotly)
Unknown
Reactivity
Reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
Notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
With effort, you can make reproducible environments
With effort, you can make reproducible environments