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.
Observable vs Polynote:
a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
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.
Observable
Polynote
Setup
Is it managed?
Is it managed?
Fully managed (setup in minutes)
No, you must host it yourself
Can you self-host?
Can you self-host?
No, you must use a managed offering
You can self-host (setup in hours)
Features
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Not Jupyter-compatible
Not Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
JS
Scala
Python
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
Connect with JS libraries (e.g. REST APIs)
Connect to databases (MySQL, Postgres)
Connect to data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake)
Provided file storage
Unknown
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
JS data visualization (e.g. D3, Vega)
Unknown
Reactivity
Reactivity
Full, realtime reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
Notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling
No notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
Environments are reproducible by default
Execution is reproducible by default
With effort, you can make reproducible environments
Version history
Version history
Version history is built in
File-based (use Git)
Collaborative editing
Collaborative editing
Multiple editors at the same time
File-based (use Git)
Comments
Comments
Comment on items within a notebook
File-based (use GitHub)
Notebook organization
Notebook organization
View notebooks in a list
File-based
Licensing
License
License
Proprietary
Open-source (Apache 2.0)
Price
Price
Free tier
Free trial (1 month)
Pay-per-user
Free