GNU Octave Reviews & Product Details

GNU Octave is used for numerical and scientific computing, including matrix-based calculations, data analysis, visualization, and simulations. Its MATLAB-like approach makes it a practical option for mathematical work and prototyping.

What company sizes and industries is GNU Octave the best fit for?

GNU Octave’s positive-use examples are concentrated among small businesses, with additional use across mid-market and enterprise organizations. Research and education are prominent fields, alongside several engineering and software disciplines.

Company size — Small Business (50 or fewer employees) is most represented; Mid-Market (51–1,000 employees) and Enterprise (more than 1,000 employees) are also represented.
Industries — Research and Higher Education feature prominently, alongside Computer Software and Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing.

What customer support options does GNU Octave provide, and how do users find the overall support experience?

GNU Octave’s support experience is mixed. Users value the online help and community resources, while finding that documentation can be incomplete and getting help with specific coding problems may take extra effort.

What features or capabilities could make GNU Octave even more useful?

GNU Octave could be more useful with a more polished and approachable interface, broader built-in capabilities, and clearer learning and troubleshooting resources.

Interface and visualization — Improve the GUI, plotting, and debugging experience.
Functions and toolboxes — Expand the available libraries and specialized capabilities so users need to write fewer workarounds.
Documentation and help — Make guidance more thorough and easier to use when learning the language or resolving coding issues.

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Verified User in Research

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

1/20/2022

"Review on GNU octave"

4.5/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

The best part about octave is it is open source and anyone (even students) can use it. The programming language is very easy and proves to be a great alternative if you don't have Matlab in-hand. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

Nothing in particular but regular update is required for removal of bugs Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Octave:

Easy to use open source software for someone who works in technical area and need to undergo complex calculation while performing simulation or modelling. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Octave solving and how is that benefiting you?

I solved the complex equations while working as an undergraduate researcher and the ease of writing code made it a perfect solver for solving my simultaneous complex equations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

Originally submitted 8/3/2020

"Octave Review by Hassan Charafeddine"

5/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

It is almost the same syntax at Matlab can do 90% of the work and more, got improved a lot over the time Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

Not much, but the plots can be improved, the editor and UI can improve a bit, but overall satisfied Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Yash C.

Research Engineer

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

3/22/2021

"Great Open Source Mathematical Software"

4/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

Variety of tasks and Functions and documentation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

Octave does not integrate CAD and PLM well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Octave:

Octave is a great alternative to MATLAB and the pace with it is growing and the community behind it might be if not greater but equal to MATLAB. But since MATLAB is quite prevalent in the industry, it is hard to beat. With the huge community of developers backing up this project and more advertising Octave is surely a great product. However, the only problem I have seen in it is the integration of CAD with PLM software. Sometimes it fails to register the commands and skips them when integrating it but sometimes does the job. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Octave solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am solving day to day computational and graphical problems with octave. The Realization is that it requires much less space than MATLAB and is open to everyone to use. By using it for Computer Aided Engineering practice, it makes me realize that, how more often people will go to GNU Octave for the same purpose. When I use it for statistical analysis it performs the tasks smoothly. Like I have used it for ANOVA and other regression models that they run just fine. I haven't modeled anything related to statistical learning where huge computation is required, but I am sure it will have such capabilities to run such models pretty efficiently. I have also done some Fluid mechanics and manufacturing process simulation in octave and the software makes it look easy enough. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Aritra B.

Electrical Loco maintenance

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/9/2021

"GNU Octave Review"

4/5

Mit S.

Engineer

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

1/9/2021

"A Common Man's MATLAB"

4.5/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

This is a perfect, free and open source software which can be used as an alternative to MATLAB as the syntax and the functions are similar. The documentation similar to MATLAB can be used for this software as well. You can do almost all the things that MATLAB can do except some missing libraries. I really like using Octave for some machine learning problems as the variables that are defined are matrix based and it is easier to have matrix operation in ML problems. The GUI is similar to MATLAB and there it feels like we are just using MATLAB. Best thing about GNU octave is that we can code it online as there are many websites available Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

GNU Octave does not have all the functionalities that MATLAB has and therefore sometimes we need to write our modules by ourselves which is a big downside. This occurs when we are solving some complex problem using Octave. Also, there are no written modules/functions/libraries available for ML programs unlike python and thus it is difficult to code neural Networks in it as the code gets lengthy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Octave:

You can download their offline version from the website and it has a GUI which is similar to MATLAB Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Octave solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am doing a MOOC course on ML which is taken by Andrew NG, a visiting professor in ML. He has designed the course such that the programming assignment are to be worked upon in GNU Octave. I have completed all the assignments in Octave. I am also working on some data analysis using OCTAVE as it is easier Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Chummi C.

Google Analytics Consultant Contractor

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/21/2021

"The most intuitive mathematically optimized language just doesnt quite hit it"

3/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

Linear algebra is a complete breeze with the language's vanilla syntax. Compared to more modernly popular languages used for Data Science such as Python , GNU Octave allows you to run tensor algebra operations using only built-in functions without having to import any 3rd party packages or modules. Despite Numpy being the standard and most commonly used library for linear algebra, I would honestly say that I still believe that even Numpy could learn a thing or two about the ease of use of Octave's mathematical syntaxes. The fact that one could implement complex matrix-vector operations in GNU Octave with mostly only built-in operators and rarely having to call functions proves just how well-optimized the language is for mathematical purposes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

Despite the language's well-optimized math functions, everything else just feels a bit too clunky and complicated for a high-level language. For instance, building functions and calling those functions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Octave:

Use it primarily for practicing building machine learning models from scratch to test your knowledge of the underlying algorithms and mathematical concepts but stick to Python along with frameworks such as Tensorflow 2.0, Pytorch, or Sci-kit learn when it comes to building bigger and more complex models. If you've been using Python or R for most of your previous projects, I'd say stick with those even for practicing and prototyping as learning GNU Octave syntax, though relatively easy to pick-up, might lead to unwanted syntax mixing when switching between the languages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Octave solving and how is that benefiting you?

Coding machine learning programs from scratch. Octave's inclination towards linear algebra allows you to create the building block functions of machine learning applications in only few lines of code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Samantha U.

Software Simulator

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

9/15/2021

"2D and 3D visualization"

4.5/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

Mathematical syntax with guide and extensive formulas, compatible with different GNU Linux and Windows distributions, share data and project.

Create answers and formulas. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

Difficult to integrate formulas to perform exclusive calculation, I need to better guide the applications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Aaliya R.

Design Engineer

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

3/21/2021

"Octave is very user friendly and easily available"

4.5/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

1. Octave is open source and a free software.

2. It is better to use Octave than MATLAB as it does not take up more memory.

3. Personally I can say it has a quick run time too. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

Octave has limited library and toolbox. For example toolbox for image visualization is not there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering GNU Octave:

Anyone out there either a student or a working professional looking for coding, calculation and solving scientific problems this is the best software out there, takes up lesser space, easily accessible and open source software. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is GNU Octave solving and how is that benefiting you?

I have been working with attitude control and space systems. Also visualization of large matrix sets (5147x5147), and some basic signal processing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Wireless

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

9/17/2021

"Best Module, class and Fast Interface to Python"

4.5/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

This is an open-source tool and It is similar to Matlab but this is a free of cost. Python to Octave Interface is seamless Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

For Windows users, It was giving some library path setting issues when using the Oct2Py module. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Enoch X.

Student

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

4/5/2021

"GNU Octave is great for learning."

4/5

What do you like best about GNU Octave?

GNU Octave shares a similar syntax to MATLAB and was easy to learn for me. The plotting functions were also intuitive to use and nicely laid out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about GNU Octave?

GNU Octave documentation was not thorough enough. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.