Paperspace Notebooks vs Polynote

Paperspace Notebooks is a hosted, browser-based Jupyter IDE for data exploration and machine-learning model development with accelerated compute. Users can launch GPU-enabled notebooks from a browser using a pre-built template or their own setup. It runs Jupyter files and projects in languages such as Python, with notebook machines running in Docker containers and shared persistent storage for work across notebooks.

Teams can invite collaborators, assign permissions, fork public projects, and create notebooks. Pro and Growth subscribers can mount public or private S3-compatible data sources, including AWS S3 and DigitalOcean Spaces. Listed tools include TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, Scikit Learn, TensorRT, TensorBoard, ONNX, XGBoost, HuggingFace, RAPIDS, and Fast.ai. An HTTP-based API supports programmatic resource management. The free plan includes 5 GB storage and free CPU and GPU machines, but free-tier machine auto-shutdown cannot exceed six hours. Paid plans start at $8.00 per month. Platforms listed are API, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows; a separate desktop app is listed for Windows 10+, OS X 10.13+, and Linux beta.

Polynote is free, open-source notebook software with first-class Scala support. One notebook can mix Scala, Python, SQL, and Vega while sharing data between languages. Its immutable data model and ordered cell semantics support reproducible work. Editing includes autocomplete, error highlighting, rich text, and LaTeX equations. The interface tracks kernel tasks and highlights the statement currently running. A plot editor and Vega support handle visualization. Polynote integrates with Apache Spark for Scala and Python; Python runs through Jep in the JVM and can share data with Scala. The software is a JVM-based server that serves a web client and is distributed for self-hosting on Linux, macOS, and other listed environments. It supports Jupyter .ipynb and Zeppelin .json formats. Runtime documentation reports successful testing with Java 8 and Java 11 and requires Python 3 with pip. Installation warns that arbitrary remote code execution makes internet-accessible deployment unsafe.