Aim
An experiment tracker grinding on storage performance — and quiet for over a year.
Comparison · Analytics
Plotly vs Citus
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Plotly and Citus — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Plotly vs Citus: at a glance
What is Plotly?
Plotly is turning its cloud into a metered compute platform with an enterprise on-ramp.
Plotly now ships on two tracks. Plotly Studio, the desktop AI app-builder, releases every one to two weeks and has spent v0.0.80 through v0.0.85 on credential handling, reasoning transparency and per-user personalization. Plotly Cloud is the louder track: since late May it has added viewer-seat pricing, domain verification, per-app compute modes with credit-metered billing, and customer-owned domains with managed TLS.
What is Citus?
Citus is in maintenance mode across four branches, with the feature work invisible from the feed.
Citus is the Postgres extension that shards tables across a cluster, and its release feed right now is almost entirely branch upkeep. Four lines are live at once — 12.1, 13.3, 14.0 and 14.1 — and the recent tags are backports and CI fixes moving between them, authored by a small handful of maintainers. The last release with user-facing feature text is Citus 14.0 in February, which added PostgreSQL 18.1 support and pointed at a blog post rather than listing what changed.
Plotly vs Citus: editorial side-by-side
Plotly
7.5ANALYTICS
Plotly is turning its cloud into a metered compute platform with an enterprise on-ramp.
◆ Current state
Plotly now ships on two tracks. Plotly Studio, the desktop AI app-builder, releases every one to two weeks and has spent v0.0.80 through v0.0.85 on credential handling, reasoning transparency and per-user personalization. Plotly Cloud is the louder track: since late May it has added viewer-seat pricing, domain verification, per-app compute modes with credit-metered billing, and customer-owned domains with managed TLS.
◆ Where it's heading
The Cloud releases are assembling the standard pieces of a hosting business in order — identity first (domain verification, explicitly framed as the step before SSO), then billing (viewer seats, then metered compute credits), and now production-grade serving (custom domains, automatic certificate renewal). Studio is being hardened as the authoring front end that feeds it: Universal Deployment pushed beyond Dash apps, credentials saved once and reused, and a Winget channel to widen Windows installs. The two tracks converge on one funnel — author in Studio, deploy to Cloud, pay by compute consumed.
◆ Prediction
The Domain Verification entry names SSO as the next step and places it in the Enterprise tier, so single sign-on is the most likely Cloud release next. Studio should hold its one-to-two-week cadence, with the pending Winget approval landing inside the stated one-to-two-week window.
Citus
2.5ANALYTICS
Citus is in maintenance mode across four branches, with the feature work invisible from the feed.
◆ Current state
Citus is the Postgres extension that shards tables across a cluster, and its release feed right now is almost entirely branch upkeep. Four lines are live at once — 12.1, 13.3, 14.0 and 14.1 — and the recent tags are backports and CI fixes moving between them, authored by a small handful of maintainers. The last release with user-facing feature text is Citus 14.0 in February, which added PostgreSQL 18.1 support and pointed at a blog post rather than listing what changed.
◆ Where it's heading
The shape here is a mature extension keeping several supported branches alive rather than pushing new capability. Correctness is the live concern: the 12.1 patches fix wrong query results, an EXPLAIN segfault, a standby coordinator crash and a deadlock, all backported from work done on newer branches. Note that the release notes are thin by design — 13.3 and 14.1 list only PR titles for backports and test plumbing, so the feed understates whatever is landing on the main line.
◆ Prediction
More 12.1 patch tags are the safe expectation while that branch stays supported. Whether the 14.x line picks up new distributed-query features is not visible from these entries — the notes only cover backports, so the main-branch work would have to be read elsewhere.
Alternatives to Plotly and Citus
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Plotly or Citus.
Glances
Every Glances release this year has carried CVE fixes — the monitoring tool is being audited in public.
Zipkin
Zipkin's last release was January 2025 — a dependency bump, and then nothing.
OpenObserve
One release turns a telemetry store into synthetics, workflows, and AI observability.
Chord
Chord rebuilt Copilot, renamed it, and let it start building the audiences it used to describe
Polars
A deprecation sweep and hive-partition join rewrites, shipped on two trains at once.
See all Plotly alternatives → · See all Citus alternatives →
Recent activity from Plotly and Citus
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoCitus12.1.14 fixes wrong results, an EXPLAIN segfault and a standby crash
- 3d agoPlotlyCustom Domains in Plotly Cloud ⚡
- 13d agoPlotlyPlotly Studio v0.0.85: Breadcrumbs & minor bug fixes
- 24d agoPlotlyPlotly Studio v0.0.84: Faster AI, Saved Credentials, and Winget Support
- 29d agoPlotlyCompute Modes and App Sizing in Plotly Cloud ⚡
- 1mo agoPlotlyPlotly Studio 0.0.83: Dash Update and macOS Fixes
- 1mo agoCitusCitus 14.1 ships as a backport and CI maintenance release
- 1mo agoCitus12.1.13 fixes a deadlock, crashes and internal UDF ownership
- 1mo agoCitusCitus 13.3 lands as a backport-only release on the 13.x line
- 1mo agoPlotlyPlotly Studio v0.0.82: Override for credential redaction, stability fixes
- 5mo agoCitusCitus 14.0 adds PostgreSQL 18.1 support
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Plotly and Citus?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Plotly is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 2.5), with 2 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Plotly better than Citus?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Plotly is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 2.5), with 2 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Plotly?
Top Plotly alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Plotly alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/plotly for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Citus?
Top Citus alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Citus alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/citus for the full list with editorial commentary on each.