Matplotlib
Ranked 5 of 19 charting libraries by recommenders
Free Python plotting library that people rely on for charts and data visualization; critics find its API verbose and slow with large data.
Free Python plotting library that people rely on for charts and data visualization; critics find its API verbose and slow with large data.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Standard tool for Python data work
“Pair it with numpy and matplotlib (two external dependencies that personally I consider part of Python itself)”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Using Python for Scripting” “Pandas and Matplotlib and SciPy all used via an ipython notebook were almost a replacement”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Wolfram Compute Services” “start with a conjecture, visualize it with matplotlib, then prove it formally”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Online Book: Exploring Mathematics with Python” Popular, versatile, mature library
“why does it make sense to pay for a bunch of AI agents to re-invent what matplotlib does and fix bugs that matplotlib has already fixed”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Software Engineering Is Back” “I had the best success with popular and versatile packages like matplotlib and ggplot2”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era” Dependable and suits my needs
“matplotlib still suits me just fine”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Software Engineering Is Back” “the open source ecosystem is great”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “Cleve Moler (Matlab, MathWorks) passed away on May 20, 2026” Gets pretty charts made
“Once I saw someone do the same thing with Python and matplotlib, I never looked back.”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?” “python and matplotlib then drew pretty pictures for management”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “Develop Cross-Platform CLI and GUI Tools with Tcl/Tk”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Verbose, clunky, unintuitive API
“The amount of boilerplate for a simple scatterplot in matplotlib is ridiculous”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “ggsql: A Grammar of Graphics for SQL” “Matplotlib is even worse, possibly the worst API I've ever used.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “In Defense of Matlab Code” “I find matplotlib to be clunky and verbose compared to ggplot”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Gribouille 0.3.0: A Grammar of Graphics for Typst” - Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Plotnine”
- Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Python is not a great language for data science”
Slow with large data or animations
“I constantly have to work around the slowness of matplotlib when creating animated sequences”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: XY – Fast, composable, GPU-accelerated charts, written in Rust” “anytime Matplotlib is way too slow or just crashes under the weight of too much data”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Some software bloat is OK” Defaults need tedious tweaking
“I spend way too much time tweaking Matplotlib and Seaborn defaults”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Cnsplots: A Python library for Cell, Nature, and Science quality plots” “I can't be bothered anymore to wrestle with matplotlib everytime”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Recreational Programming” Maintainer's ban on AI contributions
“the maintainer enforced a blanket ban on contributions from AI”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me” “made a mistake in terms of blanket banning AI”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it”
Other charting libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other charting libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 19 charting libraries, rankedWhat people said
28 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I can't be bothered anymore to wrestle with matplotlib everytime”
“python and matplotlib then drew pretty pictures for management”
“get my charts done without messing about with matplotlib”
“I had the best success with popular and versatile packages like matplotlib and ggplot2”
“I constantly have to work around the slowness of matplotlib when creating animated sequences”
“been stuck on matplotlib for centuries”
“even big libraries (e.g. matplotlib) make half their functions return Any”
“LLMs have been able to one-shot matplotlib since GPT 3.5”
“ggplot is more intuitive IMHO than say matplotlib”
“I find matplotlib to be clunky and verbose compared to ggplot”
“matplotlib has an xkcd style for a different sort of handmade aesthetic”
“the open source ecosystem is great”
“The amount of boilerplate for a simple scatterplot in matplotlib is ridiculous”
“I spend way too much time tweaking Matplotlib and Seaborn defaults”
“Maybe do that in ggplot2 or matplotlib if you want to show you can write code”
“Makie is tremendously superior to matplotlib.”
“the maintainer enforced a blanket ban on contributions from AI”
“made a mistake in terms of blanket banning AI”
“matplotlib still suits me just fine”
“why does it make sense to pay for a bunch of AI agents to re-invent what matplotlib does and fix bugs that matplotlib has already fixed”
“start with a conjecture, visualize it with matplotlib, then prove it formally”
“Matplotlib is even worse, possibly the worst API I've ever used.”
“Pair it with numpy and matplotlib (two external dependencies that personally I consider part of Python itself)”
“Pandas and Matplotlib and SciPy all used via an ipython notebook were almost a replacement”
“I equally don't like matplotlib and R's ggplot.”
“Most of this is not about Python, it's about matplotlib.”
“Once I saw someone do the same thing with Python and matplotlib, I never looked back.”
“anytime Matplotlib is way too slow or just crashes under the weight of too much data”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.