Lightning AI Studios vs MATLAB Grader
Lightning AI Studios
lightning.aiMATLAB Grader
mathworks.comSide by side
| Figure | Lightning AI Studios | MATLAB Grader |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 9 | 1 |
| Spec score · Coding Playgrounds | 9.3 (#6) | 8.1 (#59) |
| Founded | Lightning AI says founder William Falcon started the company in 2019 with Luis Capelo when it was called Grid.ai. | 1984 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | AI Studio is a persistent, collaborative GPU cloud workspace for training models, running inference, building agents and AI apps, and coding together. | MATLAB Grader lets instructors create interactive MATLAB coding assignments and automatically grade student submissions for formative assessments, quizzes, and exams. |
| Support | Lightning lists email, Discord, and Twitter as support channels, and a dedicated Slack channel for enterprise support. | MathWorks offers product documentation, community answers, and technical support contact options for MATLAB Grader users. |
Plans
Lightning AI Studios
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Pro$20 a month
- Pro (annual)$20 a month
- Pro (monthly)$50 a month
- Teams$119 a month
- Teams (annual)$119 a month
- Teams (monthly)$140 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Lightning AI Studios
Lightning AI Studios is a cloud workspace for training models, running inference, building agents and AI apps, and coding collaboratively. Its persistent environments save installed packages, custom Python versions, and downloaded files. Studios offer browser-accessible VS Code and JupyterLab, plus AI copilots for AI and machine-learning work, including CUDA and PyTorch debugging. Teams can collaborate in real time on private projects, use a full-stack runtime, and deploy full-stack applications. Users can connect S3 buckets and EFS volumes through Lightning Drive, import models from Hugging Face and GitHub, or connect local IDEs such as VS Code, Cursor, and PyCharm over SSH. An SDK supports workflow automation. The Free plan is free and includes one active Studio, 50 GB persistent storage, and up to two concurrent GPUs; that Studio requires a restart every four hours. Pro and Teams plans have higher storage and GPU limits. Enterprise offers deployment in a customer VPC using AWS or GCP cloud credits.
MATLAB Grader
MATLAB Grader lets instructors create interactive MATLAB coding assignments and automatically grade submissions for formative assessment, quizzes and exams. Its authoring environment runs in a browser and requires no installation or maintenance. Problem descriptions can include rich text, images, hyperlinks and LaTeX. Instructors can choose pass/fail or weighted grading, give contextual feedback, review attempt histories and examine analytics about concepts students find difficult. Learners can work in MATLAB Online, with submissions and results syncing back to MATLAB Grader without an extra login step. The service supports LMS platforms including Open edX, Blackboard Learn, D2L Brightspace, Canvas, Moodle and Sakai, plus other systems that support LTI Advantage. MathWorks states that it is certified for LTI 1.3 and related LTI Advantage services. The product is free with a MATLAB license that is current under maintenance. LMS integration requires a qualifying academic license, and participating learners must be enrolled students covered by it. It is available on Linux, macOS, Windows and the web.