# Fast Plotting Library

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fast-plotting-library/69648>\
**Category:** Tooling\
**Tags:** question, plotting\
**Created:** [October 12, 2021, 11:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fast-plotting-library/69648 "2021-10-12T23:05:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ess3sq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ess3sq/32/26834_2.png) [@ess3sq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ess3sq)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 11:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fast-plotting-library/69648/1 "2021-10-12T23:05:40Z")

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Hello there,

I am trying to find the fastest plotting library. With fast, I don’t mean quick at plotting thousands of points, but _fast to load_. I need to make a couple histograms with a few dozen data points, nothing fancy and only for personal purposes (no publication-grade or anything).

Since I don’t need to wait a long time for calculations or anything of the sort (the data is in a text file and I simply want a script that reads it in and makes histograms) in this case I cannot use something like Plots with such a horrendous precompilation time.

My requirements are:

- Make histograms
- Save plots to disk as images

Any suggestions?

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**Author:** ![PetrKryslUCSD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/petrkryslucsd/32/215825_2.png) [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 11:14pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fast-plotting-library/69648/2 "2021-10-12T23:14:06Z")

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Gaston.jl or Gnuplot.jl.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![stillyslalom](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stillyslalom/32/45687_2.png) [@stillyslalom](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stillyslalom)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 11:16pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fast-plotting-library/69648/3 "2021-10-12T23:16:46Z")

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From a fresh REPL session (Julia 1.7-rc1, Windows 10),

```julia
julia> @time begin
           using GR
           h = histogram(rand(100))
           savefig(joinpath(tempdir(), "test.png"))
       end
  7.988594 seconds (16.70 M allocations: 905.847 MiB, 5.31% gc time)

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ess3sq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ess3sq/32/26834_2.png) [@ess3sq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ess3sq)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/fast-plotting-library/69648/4 "2021-10-12T23:27:01Z")

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Both excellent suggestions, thanks!  
@PetrKryslUCSD @stillyslalom