Side by side
Chemiscope vs Tulip
Both stand on data visualization software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan APISelf-hostedWeb
Chemiscope brings linked structure and property views into a free, open-source workflow. Its notebook integrations, embedding options, and large-database features make it suited to research visualization, with compressed JSON files excluded from the offline viewer.
Visit Chemiscope Free plan APILinuxMac+1
Tulip offers extensive graph visualization and programming access without a software charge. Users should be prepared to obtain current builds from the source repository rather than precompiled installers.
Visit TulipThe facts
| Chemiscope | Tulip | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Self-hosted, Web | API, Linux, Mac, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Not published |
| Plans published | 1 | None |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | chemiscope.org | tulip.labri.fr |
| On data visualization software | #46 of 98 | #42 of 98 |
Chemiscope: what it does well
- Free and open source under the BSD license
- Combines 3D structures with interactive 2D or 3D plots
- Supports Jupyter, JupyterLab, VS Code, marimo, and Colab
- Can embed visualizations in Streamlit and Sphinx
- Handles databases of up to hundreds of thousands of structures
What to know first
- Standalone HTML does not support compressed .json.gz files
- Large maps show only a subset while zoomed out
- No separate native desktop platform is listed
Tulip: what it does well
- Interactive exploration with filtering and dynamic layouts
- Designed for graphs up to a million nodes and edges
- C++ and Python plugin architecture
- Broad documented graph import and export formats
- Free software under LGPL v3 or later
What to know first
- No longer provides precompiled binaries
- Current development version is distributed through source
- Desktop platform support excludes mobile systems
- Historical official binaries stop at version 6.0.1
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