marimo as a Colab alternative

Google Colab is great for getting started, but you hit limits fast. Your data must interact with Google’s servers, you can’t run colab on your own hardware, and git workflows are painful. marimo gives you full control while keeping the notebook experience you love.

marimo can run anywhere

You can run marimo anywhere — on your own hardware, any cloud provider, or for free on molab, our cloud-hosted notebook workspace. You can even use molab to host free public demos that sync directly with your GitHub repository. This control matters for real work. Need GPUs? Use your own or any cloud provider. Have sensitive data? Keep everything on your servers. Work at a company with strict security? Run marimo behind your firewall with access to internal databases.

Already have Colab notebooks? marimo includes conversion tools to convert Jupyter notebooks to marimo with a single command: marimo convert notebook.ipynb > notebook.py.

Colab forces you to send data to Google and limits your hardware choices. marimo runs on your infrastructure with your rules. Connect directly to PostgreSQL, Snowflake, or any database without worrying about data leaving your control.

marimo and git

While not impossible, Colab notebooks are hard to add to private git repositories. marimo notebooks are Python files that work great with version control, and uv support makes notebooks self-contained. Even if you’re able to store the notebook in git, the .ipynb files create messy git diffs full of execution counts and output data. marimo notebooks are clean Python files that show real code changes in git diffs.

Another benefit of using Python files under the hood is that you can benefit from modern improvements to the language. The uv integration means that notebooks include their own dependencies. Share a marimo notebook and anyone can run it without guessing what packages to install. No more “works on my machine” problems or complex setup instructions.

marimo has deployment options

Need to share results with non-technical users? Run marimo run notebook.py to create a web app. Want to automate analysis? Use python notebook.py from the command line or in scripts. Want to run the tests in your notebook? Use pytest notebook.py to run those.

Colab only works in the browser with Google’s interface. marimo gives you flexibility - develop interactively, deploy as web apps, or automate as CLI tools. One notebook, many ways to use it.

molab: a free cloud notebook for demos and sharing

Many library maintainers use Colab to demo their work, but Colab requires viewers to have a Google account. molab is a free, cloud-hosted marimo workspace where anyone can run your notebooks — no account required, no setup needed.

Use molab.marimo.io/github to run any marimo notebook from GitHub directly in the cloud — a drop-in replacement for “Open in Colab” buttons in your README. The code will live in your repo and your demos stay in sync.

Want to quickly prototype a demo? Visit molab.new to spin up a notebook instantly.

Better for real projects and demos

marimo works for real projects where you need control, security, and professional workflows. With molab, you can also host notebooks in app mode — turning your notebooks into interactive web apps that anyone can use, no coding required.