Engineering · paid tool
MATLAB alternatives
Numerical computing environment for modelling, analysis, and simulation.
Free alternatives
Highest score first. The score weighs licence openness, repository activity, traction, feature coverage, and cost; factors without data are left out and the rest are reweighted.
Julia
Ranking score 89.1/100
High-performance language for numerical and scientific computing.
- Licence
- MIT
- Platforms
- macos, windows, linux
- Self-hostable
- No
- Repo activity
- Last release October 26, 2026
- GitHub stars
- 49,208
- Last verified
- October 24, 2026
Why this rank
Score breakdown for Julia Factor Points Weight Licence opennessMIT licence (open); not self-hostable 17.5 25% Repository activityLast activity 0 day(s) before 2026-10-26 25 25% Popularity49208 GitHub stars 20 20% Feature coverage5 of 6 curated capability tags covered 16.7 20% Costfree pricing model 10 10% Points add up to the score. Factors without data are left out and the remaining weights are renormalised.
GNU Octave
Ranking score 84.5/100
Numerical computing language compatible with many MATLAB scripts.
- Licence
- GPL-3.0
- Platforms
- macos, windows, linux
- Self-hostable
- No
- Repo activity
- Last release July 10, 2026
- GitHub stars
- 668
- Last verified
- October 24, 2026
Why this rank
Score breakdown for GNU Octave Factor Points Weight Licence opennessGPL-3.0 licence (open); not self-hostable 17.5 25% Repository activityLast activity 23 day(s) before 2026-10-26 25 25% Popularity668 GitHub stars 12 20% Feature coverage6 of 6 curated capability tags covered 20 20% Costfree pricing model 10 10% Points add up to the score. Factors without data are left out and the remaining weights are renormalised.
Scilab
Ranking score 55.3/100
Numerical computation and simulation for engineering and science.
- Licence
- GPL-2.0
- Platforms
- macos, windows, linux
- Self-hostable
- No
- Repo activity
- Last commit October 14, 2022
- GitHub stars
- 401
- Last verified
- October 24, 2026
Why this rank
Score breakdown for Scilab Factor Points Weight Licence opennessGPL-2.0 licence (open); not self-hostable 17.5 25% Repository activityLast activity 1473 day(s) before 2026-10-26 0 25% Popularity401 GitHub stars 11.1 20% Feature coverage5 of 6 curated capability tags covered 16.7 20% Costfree pricing model 10 10% Points add up to the score. Factors without data are left out and the remaining weights are renormalised.