LabPlot — The Complete Guide: Data Analysis and Scientific Plots as a Free Origin Alternative
LabPlot is open-source software for analysing and presenting data, with an interface reminiscent of Origin. It is actively developed by the KDE community and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
LabPlot
KDE
Data analysis and scientific plotting in a graphical interface — a free alternative to Origin, with curve fitting and FFT.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Data import — CSV, Excel, databases and measuring instruments.
- Publication-quality plots — 2D and 3D, with full control over axes and legend.
- Curve fitting — ready-made models and your own functions.
- Signal processing — FFT, filtering and derivatives.
- Statistics and notebooks — descriptive statistics and computational notebooks alongside the plots.
Who it suits
Students and lab staff who process test results and want a high-quality plot without writing code — and without an Origin licence. Anyone producing the same plots again and again will benefit from a script in gnuplot or Python.
Related tools
For a long-standing alternative in a similar style — SciDAVis. For command-line plotting — gnuplot. For MATLAB-style numerical computing — GNU Octave.
SciDAVis
SciDAVis (open-source project)
Scientific data analysis and publication-quality plotting — tables, curve fitting and Python scripting.
Get it from the vendor
gnuplot
gnuplot Project
Publication-quality plotting driven from scripts.
Get it from the vendor
Python
Python Software Foundation
The language behind most modern engineering computation, and its full ecosystem.
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GNU Octave
GNU Project
Numerical computing in MATLAB-compatible syntax — matrices, equations, signals and plots.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
LabPlot is the most modern free alternative to Origin, and suits most work with test and measurement data.