CodePen vs Google Colab
CodePen
codepen.io
Google Colab
colab.research.google.comSide by side
| Figure | CodePen | Google Colab |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8/mo | $8.33/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 9 |
| Spec score · Coding Playgrounds | 8.7 (#19) | 9.3 (#4) |
| Spec score · Code Playground Software | 8.6 (#8) | 9.1 (#3) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Users can add external CSS and JavaScript resources, use other Pens as resources, and search for JavaScript and CSS libraries from CDNjs. | Users can import data from Google Drive, spreadsheets, GitHub, and other sources, and the site lists Google Cloud Storage, Sheets, and BigQuery resources. |
| Intended users | CodePen describes itself as useful for developers of any skill and particularly empowering for people learning to code, as well as for prototyping, debugging, client review, hiring, and portfolios. | Google describes Colab as useful for students, data scientists, AI researchers, educators, and researchers. |
| Support | CodePen directs users to its documentation and an online support form, and lists [email protected] as a contact address. | Users can report bugs or ask questions through Help > Send feedback in any Colab notebook. |
Plans
Google Colab
- Colab Pro$8.33 a month
- Colab Pro+$41.66 a month
- ColabFree
- Colab freeFree
- Colab EnterprisePriced on request
- Colab ProPrice not published
- Colab Pro+Price not published
- Colab Pro / Pro+ / Pay As You GoPriced on request
- Pay As You GoPrice not published
In their own words
CodePen
CodePen is a web-based social development environment for creating, testing, deploying, sharing and discovering front-end code. In a Pen, users write HTML, CSS and JavaScript and see a live browser preview. It supports HTML preprocessors such as Markdown, Haml, Slim and Pug, and CSS preprocessors including Sass, Less, Stylus and PostCSS. The CodePen 2.0 editor supports automatic preprocessing, live previews, file systems, version history, collaboration and one-click Pen deployment. Users can add external CSS and JavaScript resources, reuse other Pens, find libraries through CDNjs and import bare npm packages through its compiler. Pens can be embedded on other websites, and CodePen documents a REST API and other embed and prefill options. Pens and Projects are public by default. PRO users can make Pens and Collections private, but anyone with the shared URL can view them without logging in. The free plan includes unlimited public Pens and three files per Pen. Starter costs $8 a month, Developer $12 a month and Super $26 a month. CodePen does not offer a self-hosted version.
Google Colab
Google Colab lets users write and run Python in a browser without configuring a local environment, with access to GPUs and notebook sharing. Its hosted Jupyter notebooks combine executable code with rich text, images, HTML, and LaTeX. Data can come from Google Drive, spreadsheets, GitHub, and other sources, with Google Cloud Storage, Sheets, and BigQuery resources listed for integration. Colab AI can generate or transform code, explain Python libraries, suggest fixes, and perform multi-step data-analysis workflows. By default, it does not access Drive files or user secrets, though it can generate code to access them when explicitly requested. Google says generative-AI features collect prompts, related code, outputs, usage information, and feedback; human reviewers may process that data for up to 18 months. Free notebooks can run for at most 12 hours, depending on availability and usage. Pro+ supports continuous execution up to 24 hours when enough compute units are available. Colab also has a Visual Studio Code extension and a beta, allowlist-gated API. Paid plans start at 8.33 USD/user/mo (annual).