Colaboratory, or “Colab” for short, is a product from Google Research. Colab allows anybody to write and execute arbitrary python code through the browser, and is especially well suited to machine learning, data analysis and education. More technically, Colab is a hosted Jupyter notebook service that requires no setup to use, while providing free access to computing resources including GPUs.
Yes. Colab is free to use.
Jupyter is the open source project on which Colab is based. Colab allows you to use and share Jupyter notebooks with others without having to download, install, or run anything.
Colab notebooks are stored in Google Drive, or can be loaded from GitHub. Colab notebooks can be shared just as you would with Google Docs or Sheets. Simply click the Share button at the top right of any Colab notebook, or follow these Google Drive file sharing instructions.
If you choose to share a notebook, the full contents of your notebook (text, code, output, and comments) will be shared. You can omit code cell output from being saved or shared by using Edit > Notebook settings > Omit code cell output when saving this notebook. The virtual machine you’re using, including any custom files and libraries that you’ve setup, will not be shared. So it’s a good idea to include cells which install and load any custom libraries or files that your notebook needs.
Yes. Choose "Upload notebook" from the File menu.
You can search Colab notebooks using Google Drive. Clicking on the Colab logo at the top left of the notebook view will show all notebooks in Drive. You can also search for notebooks that you have opened recently using File > Open notebook.
Code is executed in a virtual machine private to your account. Virtual machines are deleted when idle for a while, and have a maximum lifetime enforced by the Colab service.
Resources in Colab are prioritized for users who have recently used less resources, in order to prevent the monopolization of limited resources by a small number of users. To get the most out of Colab, consider closing your Colab tabs when you are done with your work, and avoid opting for a GPU when it is not needed for your work. This will make it less likely that you will run into usage limits in Colab. Users interested in going beyond the resource limits in the free version of Colab may be interested in Colab Pro.
What browsers are supported?
Colab works with most major browsers, and is most thoroughly tested with the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
In 2014 we worked with the Jupyter development team to release an early version of the tool. Since then Colab has continued to evolve, guided by internal usage.
Colab focuses on supporting Python and its ecosystem of third-party tools. We're aware that users are interested in support for other Jupyter kernels (eg R or Scala). We would like to support these, but don't yet have any ETA.