Google Colab vs Nextjournal

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).

Nextjournal is a notebook for reproducible research and data-driven work, available on the web or self-hosted. A notebook can combine programming-language runtimes, with values passed between them through files; listed languages include Python, R, Julia, Clojure, Bash, JavaScript, and ClojureScript. Users can edit together in real time and create public or private groups. Automatic saves preserve changes, data, and the runtime environment, with earlier versions available for restoration. Each running notebook gets a compute instance that shuts down when computation finishes, and a runtime can use up to 8 NVIDIA Tesla K80, P100, or P100 Workstation GPUs. Notebooks can access Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage, clone private GitHub repositories, and import Docker Hub images. Import formats include Jupyter, IPython, RMarkdown, and Markdown; notebooks can be exported to Markdown. Published notebooks have permanent URLs and can be public or group-limited; viewers can remix read-only published versions. Plans include Free and paid plans from $299/mo, with a 14-day trial.