What is JupyterLab used for?

JupyterLab is the extensible web-based interface for Project Jupyter, combining notebooks, terminals, a text editor and a file browser. It is a good fit for data analysis in interactive notebooks and reproducible research workflows.

Is JupyterLab open source?

Yes. JupyterLab is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at jupyterlab/jupyterlab and is written mainly in TypeScript.

Yes. JupyterLab is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is JupyterLab an alternative to?

JupyterLab is an open-source alternative to MATLAB, Hex and DataSpell. Other open-source alternatives to MATLAB include Jupyter Notebook, Spyder and RStudio.

Is JupyterLab actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to JupyterLab was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v4.6.4, published on 21 September 2026. The project has 15k stars on GitHub.

JupyterLab: open-source alternative to MATLAB, Hex

About JupyterLab

JupyterLab is an extensible environment for interactive and reproducible computing, built on the Jupyter Notebook and its architecture. It is the next-generation user interface for Project Jupyter, offering the familiar building blocks of the classic notebook, such as notebooks, a terminal, a text editor, a file browser and rich outputs, in a more flexible interface.

It can be extended with npm packages that use its public APIs. Prebuilt extensions are distributed through PyPI, conda and other package managers, while source extensions can be installed directly from npm with an extra build step. Extensions can be discovered through the jupyterlab-extension topic on GitHub.

JupyterLab is written in TypeScript, released under the BSD-3-Clause license, and installed with conda, mamba or pip. The project notes that JupyterLab 3 reached end of maintenance in May 2024, with critical fixes backported until the end of that year, and encourages upgrading to JupyterLab 4. Documentation is hosted on ReadTheDocs.

Key features

Notebooks, terminal and text editor in one interface
File browser and rich output rendering
Extensions distributed via npm, PyPI and conda
Installable with conda, mamba or pip
Public APIs for custom extensions

Good fit for

→Data analysis in interactive notebooks
→Reproducible research workflows

Built with: TypeScript
Tags: jupyter; notebooks; data-science; interactive-computing; python; extensions; typescript; research

JupyterLab: questions and answers

What is JupyterLab used for?: JupyterLab is the extensible web-based interface for Project Jupyter, combining notebooks, terminals, a text editor and a file browser. It is a good fit for data analysis in interactive notebooks and reproducible research workflows.
Is JupyterLab open source?: Yes. JupyterLab is open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at jupyterlab/jupyterlab and is written mainly in TypeScript.
Is JupyterLab free?: Yes. JupyterLab is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is JupyterLab an alternative to?: JupyterLab is an open-source alternative to MATLAB, Hex and DataSpell. Other open-source alternatives to MATLAB include Jupyter Notebook, Spyder and RStudio.
Is JupyterLab actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to JupyterLab was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v4.6.4, published on 21 September 2026. The project has 15k stars on GitHub.