JupyterLab
JupyterLab is a free, web-based interactive environment for working with notebooks, code, and data. Users can arrange notebooks, text editors, terminals, and custom components together with tabs and splitters. Code consoles provide interactive scratch space, while kernel-backed documents can run code in files such as Markdown, Python, R, and LaTeX. JupyterLab supports the .ipynb format used by classic Jupyter Notebook and can view or edit formats including Markdown, images, CSV, JSON, HTML, LaTeX, and PDF. Extensions can add themes, file viewers and editors, output renderers, menus, shortcuts, and settings. They can also execute arbitrary code in the server, kernel, and browser, so the documentation advises installing only trusted extensions. Real-time collaboration can be activated with the jupyter_collaboration extension. Visualization libraries include matplotlib and Plotly, though interactive plots or widgets may require additional packages. JupyterLab can be installed locally with pip; a Homebrew command is also provided for macOS and Linux.
Who it is for
It suits people working in interactive, exploratory computing, including data science, scientific computing, computational journalism, and machine learning. It is available as free software for local installation.
What is good
- Combines notebooks, editors, terminals, and components.
- Supports .ipynb notebooks and many file formats.
- Extensions can add viewers, editors, and renderers.
- Real-time collaboration is available through an extension.
What to know first
- Extensions can execute arbitrary code across the server, kernel, and browser.
- Interactive plots or widgets may need additional packages.
- Notebook JavaScript and HTML outputs from other machines require trust before display.
- Project Jupyter does not provide the software as a service.
Verdict
JupyterLab brings notebooks, code, and data work into one configurable environment, with support for extensions and collaboration. Install extensions selectively, and plan for extra packages where interactive plots or widgets need them.
JupyterLab plans and pricing
All plansCompared on coding playgrounds
- Free plan
- Yes
