Comparison

Bokeh vs Plotly

Bokeh lands on Worth it, and Plotly lands on Depends.

Bokeh

Worth it

Confidence: Medium

Buy if your team writes Python and wants free interactive charts, dashboards, or browser data apps.

Depends

Confidence: Medium

Buy if your team writes Python and needs interactive charts or deployable data apps . the free open-source libraries are hard to beat.

Bokeh versus Plotly
Compare	Bokeh	Plotly
Verdict	Worth it	Depends
Best for	Python data teams	Python data teams
Who it's not for	Non-coders wanting drag-and-drop charts	Non-coders who just need quick charts
Privacy	One medium-severity CVE (CVSS 5.4) disclosed Jan 2026; fixed in Bokeh 3.8.2 . patch any deployed servers.^⁹	SOC2, SSO/SAML, and a responsible disclosure program are documented; one third-party scanner flags weak HTTP headers on the legacy domain.
Support quality	No support evidence in sources	No support-quality evidence found
Public sentiment	Users praise ease of use and superb interactivity, but report slow plotting at scale and weak error reporting.^⁴	No independent user reviews surfaced in the sources reviewed; mentions are vendor marketing, tutorials, and academic citations.¹³
Biggest gotcha	Deployed Bokeh servers had a WebSocket hijacking flaw (CVE-2026-21883); patch to 3.8.2+^⁹	Pricing not published in sources; expect a sales conversation for Cloud and Enterprise¹³