# Google Colab

18 Hacker News commenters recommended Google Colab and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free GPU and TPU access in a hosted Jupyter notebook, handy for quick experiments and data science work. Common caveat: sessions can disconnect and setup can be slow.

## Why people recommend it

- Free GPU and TPU access (4 comments): "You can test the whole thing for free on a GPU with Google Colab" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49904534)) "you can actually do that with free Google Colab instances" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48525906)) "use the free Kaggle/Google Cola T4s/TPUs to get started" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963905))
- Cheap paid plans for training (3 comments): "Overall, it cost me <$2 using Colab's pay as you go plan to train the model, which was surprisingly less than I expected." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095515)) "their $49 dollar plan allows you access to h100's and I can run qwen there in a Jupyter notebook" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450830)) "They give you 200 cloud compute units on google collab" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871473))
- Google Drive integration (2 comments): "Google Collab has access to Google Drive so you can write some nifty Python scripts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334617)) "I have some Google Collab notebooks where I download/upload the videos" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50018934))
- Good for reproducible experiments (2 comments): "I really like Colab as a platform for little reproducible experiments" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541367)) "seems rather spiffy for data science" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042257))

## What people warn about

- Unreliable connections and service problems (2 comments): "Google Colab's 'Connect to Drive' is down as we speak." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941433)) "Colab takes too long to setup and then kicks us off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46234829))
- Weak model and agent support (2 comments): "A cursory glance reveals it has limited model support." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45929933)) "colab/data science agent are all bad experiences." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928160))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Jupyter Notebook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jupyter.md): 67 recommend
- [marimo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/marimo.md): 53 recommend
- [Pluto.jl](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pluto-jl.md): 21 recommend
- [Deepnote](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepnote.md): 12 recommend
- [JupyterLite](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jupyterlite.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://colab.research.google.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Google Colab", https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-colab/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).