Mathematica Alternatives for Mac
There are many alternatives to Mathematica for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best Mac alternative is SageMath, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Mathematica and many of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Mathematica are GNU Octave, Maxima, Jupyter and R (programming language).
Mathematica alternatives are mainly Calculators but may also be Programming Languages or Statistical Analyzers. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Mathematica.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
SageMath is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL. It builds on top of many existing open-source packages: NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, Sympy, Maxima, GAP, FLINT, R and many more.
SageMath vs Mathematica opinions
vfricoSage supports symbolic maths through Maxima
It can calculate many things symbolically and combines many other software packages.
Sage needs programming language skills, it doesn't support well symbolic math.
Its free and sounds capable
Octave is a computer program for performing numerical computations which is mostly compatible with MATLAB. It is part of the GNU Project. It is free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
GNU Octave vs Mathematica opinions
Octave needs programming language skills, it doesn't support well symbolic math.
Maxima is a system for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, polynomials, and sets, lists, vectors, matrices, and tensors.
Maxima vs Mathematica opinions
It's free. It is also smaller, so starts up fast. Runs on Android devices as well. Lot's of functionality, including symbolic and numerical operations. Symbolic operations are not as extensive as Mathematica, but adequate for many operations. Numeric operations are considerably slower than Mathematica, and numerically oriented apps such as R, Matlab or Octave.
vfricoIt does support Symbolic math, but Matlab or Octave not
I'm a theoretical physicist and I can do almost al the math I need with Mxima
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Cloudron
The Jupyter Notebook is a web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and explanatory text.
Jupyter vs Mathematica opinions
It can run python inline and do markup work all in one system. Can be worked via network and connected to via browser (including through phone) and set up to run distributed computing systems easily. Additionally it's open source and server side runs on most major operating systems.
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.
R (programming language) vs Mathematica opinions
R is really only useful for statistics, and not even mathematical statistics.
- Paid • Proprietary
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- iPad
MATLAB is a numerical computing environment and programming language. Maintained by The MathWorks, MATLAB allows easy matrix manipulation, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs in other languages.
MATLAB vs Mathematica opinions
snshepherdBoth are comprehensive mathematics solutions, and have very similar features, as well as even both being commercial.
Mathematica is mainly a CAS (symbolic maths), but MATLAB is more for numeric analysis
MATLAB is mainly for numerics
MATLAB can do symbolic math but it's far less convenient
Mathematica is not only for numerics, its for analysis, while Matlab is primarily for numerics.
It's numerical, not symbolic
juliocortesMathematica is mainly for symbolic maths
Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments.
Julia vs Mathematica opinions
It's an easy, powerful, really fast language which feels like a mix of Python and Ruby but runs like C. It comes with many mathematical functions, has a good stack of libraries for graphs (including Matplotlib as PyPlot) and can be used with the Jupyter Notebook. Still not at version 1.0, but already a great tool!
Spyder (previously known as Pydee) is a free open-source Python development environment providing MATLAB-like features in a simple and light-weighted software, available for Windows XP/Vista/7, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.
Spyder vs Mathematica opinions
It is a development environment for Python, not a symbolic math language/software.
Soulver is a smart notepad with a built-in calculator. It gives instant answers to any calculations it finds in your text. It's a better way to work stuff out than with a traditional calculator, and a more lightweight tool for quick calculations than a spreadsheet.
