JupyterLab vs marimo
JupyterLab
jupyter.org
marimo
marimo.ioSide by side
| Figure | JupyterLab | marimo |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Coding Playgrounds | 9.1 (#9) | 8.7 (#24) |
| Spec score · Notebook Software | 8.8 (#4) | 8.6 (#8) |
| Spec score · Scientific Computing Notebooks | 8.6 (#4) | 8.4 (#5) |
| Deployment | JupyterLab can be installed with pip, and the installation page also gives a Homebrew command for macOS and Linux. | Notebooks can be served as web apps, executed as scripts, or exported as WebAssembly-powered HTML. |
| Founded | 2014 | 2024 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Intended users | JupyterLab is focused on interactive, exploratory computing and is suited to workflows such as data science, scientific computing, computational journalism, and machine learning. | The maker lists AI engineers, analysts, educators, analytics engineers, data engineers, data scientists, ML engineers, and web developers as user groups. |
| Security | JavaScript and HTML outputs in notebooks created on other machines are sanitized and not displayed until the notebook is trusted. | marimo says no user code runs without explicit user action, and notebooks opened in edit mode are statically loaded rather than executed as Python modules. |
| What it does | JupyterLab is a web-based environment for interactive and reproducible computing with notebooks, terminals, text editors, file browsing and rich outputs. | marimo is an open-source reactive Python notebook for reproducible experiments, data work, and building apps. |
Plans
In their own words
JupyterLab
JupyterLab is a web-based environment for interactive work with notebooks, code and data. Its workspace brings notebooks, text editors, terminals and custom components together in tabs and splitters. Code consoles act as scratchpads, and kernel-backed documents can run code in files such as Markdown, Python, R and LaTeX. It supports the .ipynb format used by classic Jupyter Notebook, and can view and edit formats including Markdown, images, CSV, JSON, HTML, LaTeX and PDF. Visualization libraries include matplotlib and Plotly; interactive plots or widgets may require additional packages. Extensions can add themes, viewers, editors, output renderers and interface controls, but can execute code in the browser, server and kernel, so only trusted extensions are advised. Real-time collaboration can be enabled with jupyter_collaboration. JavaScript and HTML outputs from notebooks created elsewhere remain hidden until the notebook is trusted. JupyterLab is free, open-source software under a modified BSD license, installed with pip or via a Homebrew command for macOS and Linux. It runs on Linux, macOS, the web and self-hosted systems.
marimo
marimo is an open-source reactive Python notebook for reproducible experiments, data work, and interactive apps. When a cell runs, dependent cells run as well or are marked stale, helping keep code and outputs consistent. Notebooks are stored as Python files that can be tracked with Git, run as scripts, or reused as modules. Users can build interfaces with sliders, dropdowns, dataframe tables, and selectable plots, then deploy notebooks as interactive web apps or run them in browsers through WebAssembly. SQL cells work with dataframes, databases, CSVs, and Google Sheets, with named backends including Polars, Pandas, PyArrow, DuckDB, SQLite, and Postgres. AI notebook features support OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama, and compatible APIs. marimo has extensions for VS Code and PyCharm, with the VS Code extension also working in Cursor and other VS Code forks. The free hosted option molab provides 4 CPUs, 32 GB RAM, and sessions up to 12 hours; notebooks are public by default. Running notebook code can execute arbitrary code, so the maker advises using trusted notebooks or reviewing code first. The open-source notebook is free.