Nextjournal vs Pluto.jl

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.

Pluto.jl is a free, open-source reactive notebook for the Julia programming language, developed for education. Its cells track dependencies, and changes cause affected cells to rerun. PlutoUI provides widgets such as sliders, text fields, and buttons; custom widgets can be built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Pluto analyzes package use, manages a separate package environment for each notebook, and stores environment details in the notebook file. Its documentation says there is no mutable workspace, so the visible code describes the program state. Notebooks can be exported with cell outputs as HTML or PDF. The software is available under the MIT License at free and supports real-time collaboration. To use the package, install Julia and start Pluto from Julia's terminal or REPL; the site lists Julia 1.10 through 1.12. It also links to an online editor powered by mybinder.org and featured notebooks that can run in a browser. Pluto was developed alongside MIT's Introduction to Computational Thinking course and is designed for students and teachers.