Alternatives to scikit-learn logo

Alternatives to scikit-learn

PyTorch, Keras, H2O, XGBoost, and Apache Spark are the most popular alternatives and competitors to scikit-learn.
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What is scikit-learn and what are its top alternatives?

Scikit-learn is a popular machine learning library in Python that offers a wide range of algorithms for tasks such as classification, regression, clustering, and more. It is known for its user-friendly interface, extensive documentation, and integration with other libraries such as NumPy and pandas. However, scikit-learn can be limited in scalability for big data sets and lacks certain advanced deep learning capabilities.

  1. TensorFlow: TensorFlow is an open-source machine learning library developed by Google that provides tools for building and training deep learning models. Key features include flexibility, scalability, and support for a wide range of platforms. Pros include powerful deep learning capabilities and support for distributed computing, while cons may include a steeper learning curve compared to scikit-learn.
  2. PyTorch: PyTorch is another deep learning library known for its flexibility and dynamic computation graphs. It offers support for building neural networks and deep learning models efficiently. Pros include a user-friendly interface and strong community support, while cons may include fewer pre-built algorithms compared to scikit-learn.
  3. XGBoost: XGBoost is a scalable machine learning library that specializes in gradient boosting algorithms. Key features include speed, performance, and accuracy in handling structured data. Pros include excellent performance in competitions and support for parallel computing, while cons may include a lack of support for deep learning models.
  4. LightGBM: LightGBM is another gradient boosting library that is known for its high speed and efficiency. It offers support for large datasets and provides strong performance in terms of accuracy. Pros include fast training times and scalability, while cons may include complex tuning parameters compared to scikit-learn.
  5. Keras: Keras is a deep learning library that offers a high-level interface to build and train neural networks. It is known for its simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for beginners in deep learning. Pros include fast prototyping and support for multiple backends like TensorFlow and Theano, while cons may include limited customization options compared to scikit-learn.
  6. H2O.ai: H2O.ai is a machine learning platform that provides tools for building and deploying machine learning models. It offers support for a wide range of algorithms and features automated machine learning capabilities. Pros include ease of use and scalability for big data, while cons may include a more complex setup process compared to scikit-learn.
  7. Dask-ML: Dask-ML is a scalable machine learning library built on top of Dask, a parallel computing library in Python. It offers support for distributed computing and allows for training models on large datasets. Pros include scalability and performance on big data, while cons may include a learning curve for Dask integration compared to scikit-learn.
  8. CatBoost: CatBoost is a gradient boosting library developed by Yandex that specializes in handling categorical features efficiently. It offers support for high-dimensional data and provides strong performance in terms of accuracy. Pros include robust handling of categorical features and top performance in competitions, while cons may include longer training times compared to scikit-learn.
  9. RapidMiner: RapidMiner is a data science platform that offers end-to-end machine learning solutions for building and deploying models. It features a visual workflow designer and automation capabilities for predictive analytics. Pros include ease of use and a wide range of integrated tools, while cons may include a steeper learning curve compared to scikit-learn.
  10. MLlib: MLlib is a machine learning library built on top of Apache Spark that provides tools for scalable machine learning. It offers support for distributed computing and integration with Spark's ecosystem. Pros include scalability and performance on big data, while cons may include a dependency on Spark infrastructure compared to scikit-learn.

Top Alternatives to scikit-learn

  • PyTorch
    PyTorch

    PyTorch is not a Python binding into a monolothic C++ framework. It is built to be deeply integrated into Python. You can use it naturally like you would use numpy / scipy / scikit-learn etc. ...

  • Keras
    Keras

    Deep Learning library for Python. Convnets, recurrent neural networks, and more. Runs on TensorFlow or Theano. https://keras.io/ ...

  • H2O
    H2O

    H2O.ai is the maker behind H2O, the leading open source machine learning platform for smarter applications and data products. H2O operationalizes data science by developing and deploying algorithms and models for R, Python and the Sparkling Water API for Spark. ...

  • XGBoost
    XGBoost

    Scalable, Portable and Distributed Gradient Boosting (GBDT, GBRT or GBM) Library, for Python, R, Java, Scala, C++ and more. Runs on single machine, Hadoop, Spark, Flink and DataFlow ...

  • Apache Spark
    Apache Spark

    Spark is a fast and general processing engine compatible with Hadoop data. It can run in Hadoop clusters through YARN or Spark's standalone mode, and it can process data in HDFS, HBase, Cassandra, Hive, and any Hadoop InputFormat. It is designed to perform both batch processing (similar to MapReduce) and new workloads like streaming, interactive queries, and machine learning. ...

  • TensorFlow
    TensorFlow

    TensorFlow is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communicated between them. The flexible architecture allows you to deploy computation to one or more CPUs or GPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device with a single API. ...

  • SciPy
    SciPy

    Python-based ecosystem of open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering. It contains modules for optimization, linear algebra, integration, interpolation, special functions, FFT, signal and image processing, ODE solvers and other tasks common in science and engineering. ...

  • Pandas
    Pandas

    Flexible and powerful data analysis / manipulation library for Python, providing labeled data structures similar to R data.frame objects, statistical functions, and much more. ...

scikit-learn alternatives & related posts

PyTorch logo

PyTorch

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A deep learning framework that puts Python first
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PROS OF PYTORCH
  • 15
    Easy to use
  • 11
    Developer Friendly
  • 10
    Easy to debug
  • 7
    Sometimes faster than TensorFlow
CONS OF PYTORCH
  • 3
    Lots of code
  • 1
    It eats poop

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Server side

We decided to use Python for our backend because it is one of the industry standard languages for data analysis and machine learning. It also has a lot of support due to its large user base.

  • Web Server: We chose Flask because we want to keep our machine learning / data analysis and the web server in the same language. Flask is easy to use and we all have experience with it. Postman will be used for creating and testing APIs due to its convenience.

  • Machine Learning: We decided to go with PyTorch for machine learning since it is one of the most popular libraries. It is also known to have an easier learning curve than other popular libraries such as Tensorflow. This is important because our team lacks ML experience and learning the tool as fast as possible would increase productivity.

  • Data Analysis: Some common Python libraries will be used to analyze our data. These include NumPy, Pandas , and matplotlib. These tools combined will help us learn the properties and characteristics of our data. Jupyter notebook will be used to help organize the data analysis process, and improve the code readability.

Client side

  • UI: We decided to use React for the UI because it helps organize the data and variables of the application into components, making it very convenient to maintain our dashboard. Since React is one of the most popular front end frameworks right now, there will be a lot of support for it as well as a lot of potential new hires that are familiar with the framework. CSS 3 and HTML5 will be used for the basic styling and structure of the web app, as they are the most widely used front end languages.

  • State Management: We decided to use Redux to manage the state of the application since it works naturally to React. Our team also already has experience working with Redux which gave it a slight edge over the other state management libraries.

  • Data Visualization: We decided to use the React-based library Victory to visualize the data. They have very user friendly documentation on their official website which we find easy to learn from.

Cache

  • Caching: We decided between Redis and memcached because they are two of the most popular open-source cache engines. We ultimately decided to use Redis to improve our web app performance mainly due to the extra functionalities it provides such as fine-tuning cache contents and durability.

Database

  • Database: We decided to use a NoSQL database over a relational database because of its flexibility from not having a predefined schema. The user behavior analytics has to be flexible since the data we plan to store may change frequently. We decided on MongoDB because it is lightweight and we can easily host the database with MongoDB Atlas . Everyone on our team also has experience working with MongoDB.

Infrastructure

  • Deployment: We decided to use Heroku over AWS, Azure, Google Cloud because it is free. Although there are advantages to the other cloud services, Heroku makes the most sense to our team because our primary goal is to build an MVP.

Other Tools

  • Communication Slack will be used as the primary source of communication. It provides all the features needed for basic discussions. In terms of more interactive meetings, Zoom will be used for its video calls and screen sharing capabilities.

  • Source Control The project will be stored on GitHub and all code changes will be done though pull requests. This will help us keep the codebase clean and make it easy to revert changes when we need to.

See more
Conor Myhrvold
Tech Brand Mgr, Office of CTO at Uber · | 8 upvotes · 2.8M views

Why we built an open source, distributed training framework for TensorFlow , Keras , and PyTorch:

At Uber, we apply deep learning across our business; from self-driving research to trip forecasting and fraud prevention, deep learning enables our engineers and data scientists to create better experiences for our users.

TensorFlow has become a preferred deep learning library at Uber for a variety of reasons. To start, the framework is one of the most widely used open source frameworks for deep learning, which makes it easy to onboard new users. It also combines high performance with an ability to tinker with low-level model details—for instance, we can use both high-level APIs, such as Keras, and implement our own custom operators using NVIDIA’s CUDA toolkit.

Uber has introduced Michelangelo (https://eng.uber.com/michelangelo/), an internal ML-as-a-service platform that democratizes machine learning and makes it easy to build and deploy these systems at scale. In this article, we pull back the curtain on Horovod, an open source component of Michelangelo’s deep learning toolkit which makes it easier to start—and speed up—distributed deep learning projects with TensorFlow:

https://eng.uber.com/horovod/

(Direct GitHub repo: https://github.com/uber/horovod)

See more
Keras logo

Keras

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Deep Learning library for Theano and TensorFlow
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PROS OF KERAS
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    Quality Documentation
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    Supports Tensorflow and Theano backends
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    Easy and fast NN prototyping
CONS OF KERAS
  • 4
    Hard to debug

related Keras posts

Conor Myhrvold
Tech Brand Mgr, Office of CTO at Uber · | 8 upvotes · 2.8M views

Why we built an open source, distributed training framework for TensorFlow , Keras , and PyTorch:

At Uber, we apply deep learning across our business; from self-driving research to trip forecasting and fraud prevention, deep learning enables our engineers and data scientists to create better experiences for our users.

TensorFlow has become a preferred deep learning library at Uber for a variety of reasons. To start, the framework is one of the most widely used open source frameworks for deep learning, which makes it easy to onboard new users. It also combines high performance with an ability to tinker with low-level model details—for instance, we can use both high-level APIs, such as Keras, and implement our own custom operators using NVIDIA’s CUDA toolkit.

Uber has introduced Michelangelo (https://eng.uber.com/michelangelo/), an internal ML-as-a-service platform that democratizes machine learning and makes it easy to build and deploy these systems at scale. In this article, we pull back the curtain on Horovod, an open source component of Michelangelo’s deep learning toolkit which makes it easier to start—and speed up—distributed deep learning projects with TensorFlow:

https://eng.uber.com/horovod/

(Direct GitHub repo: https://github.com/uber/horovod)

See more

I am going to send my website to a Venture Capitalist for inspection. If I succeed, I will get funding for my StartUp! This website is based on Django and Uses Keras and TensorFlow model to predict medical imaging. Should I use Heroku or PythonAnywhere to deploy my website ?? Best Regards, Adarsh.

See more
H2O logo

H2O

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H2O.ai AI for Business Transformation
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PROS OF H2O
  • 2
    Highly customizable
  • 2
    Very fast and powerful
  • 2
    Auto ML is amazing
  • 2
    Super easy to use
CONS OF H2O
  • 1
    Not very popular

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XGBoost logo

XGBoost

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Scalable and Flexible Gradient Boosting
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PROS OF XGBOOST
    Be the first to leave a pro
    CONS OF XGBOOST
      Be the first to leave a con

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      Apache Spark logo

      Apache Spark

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      Fast and general engine for large-scale data processing
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      PROS OF APACHE SPARK
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        Open-source
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        Fast and Flexible
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        One platform for every big data problem
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        Great for distributed SQL like applications
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        Easy to install and to use
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        Works well for most Datascience usecases
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        Interactive Query
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        Machine learning libratimery, Streaming in real
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        In memory Computation
      CONS OF APACHE SPARK
      • 4
        Speed

      related Apache Spark posts

      Eric Colson
      Chief Algorithms Officer at Stitch Fix · | 21 upvotes · 6.1M views

      The algorithms and data infrastructure at Stitch Fix is housed in #AWS. Data acquisition is split between events flowing through Kafka, and periodic snapshots of PostgreSQL DBs. We store data in an Amazon S3 based data warehouse. Apache Spark on Yarn is our tool of choice for data movement and #ETL. Because our storage layer (s3) is decoupled from our processing layer, we are able to scale our compute environment very elastically. We have several semi-permanent, autoscaling Yarn clusters running to serve our data processing needs. While the bulk of our compute infrastructure is dedicated to algorithmic processing, we also implemented Presto for adhoc queries and dashboards.

      Beyond data movement and ETL, most #ML centric jobs (e.g. model training and execution) run in a similarly elastic environment as containers running Python and R code on Amazon EC2 Container Service clusters. The execution of batch jobs on top of ECS is managed by Flotilla, a service we built in house and open sourced (see https://github.com/stitchfix/flotilla-os).

      At Stitch Fix, algorithmic integrations are pervasive across the business. We have dozens of data products actively integrated systems. That requires serving layer that is robust, agile, flexible, and allows for self-service. Models produced on Flotilla are packaged for deployment in production using Khan, another framework we've developed internally. Khan provides our data scientists the ability to quickly productionize those models they've developed with open source frameworks in Python 3 (e.g. PyTorch, sklearn), by automatically packaging them as Docker containers and deploying to Amazon ECS. This provides our data scientist a one-click method of getting from their algorithms to production. We then integrate those deployments into a service mesh, which allows us to A/B test various implementations in our product.

      For more info:

      #DataScience #DataStack #Data

      See more
      Patrick Sun
      Software Engineer at Stitch Fix · | 10 upvotes · 52.8K views

      As a frontend engineer on the Algorithms & Analytics team at Stitch Fix, I work with data scientists to develop applications and visualizations to help our internal business partners make data-driven decisions. I envisioned a platform that would assist data scientists in the data exploration process, allowing them to visually explore and rapidly iterate through their assumptions, then share their insights with others. This would align with our team's philosophy of having engineers "deploy platforms, services, abstractions, and frameworks that allow the data scientists to conceive of, develop, and deploy their ideas with autonomy", and solve the pain of data exploration.

      The final product, code-named Dora, is built with React, Redux.js and Victory, backed by Elasticsearch to enable fast and iterative data exploration, and uses Apache Spark to move data from our Amazon S3 data warehouse into the Elasticsearch cluster.

      See more
      TensorFlow logo

      TensorFlow

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      Open Source Software Library for Machine Intelligence
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      PROS OF TENSORFLOW
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        High Performance
      • 19
        Connect Research and Production
      • 16
        Deep Flexibility
      • 12
        Auto-Differentiation
      • 11
        True Portability
      • 6
        Easy to use
      • 5
        High level abstraction
      • 5
        Powerful
      CONS OF TENSORFLOW
      • 9
        Hard
      • 6
        Hard to debug
      • 2
        Documentation not very helpful

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      Tom Klein

      Google Analytics is a great tool to analyze your traffic. To debug our software and ask questions, we love to use Postman and Stack Overflow. Google Drive helps our team to share documents. We're able to build our great products through the APIs by Google Maps, CloudFlare, Stripe, PayPal, Twilio, Let's Encrypt, and TensorFlow.

      See more
      Conor Myhrvold
      Tech Brand Mgr, Office of CTO at Uber · | 8 upvotes · 2.8M views

      Why we built an open source, distributed training framework for TensorFlow , Keras , and PyTorch:

      At Uber, we apply deep learning across our business; from self-driving research to trip forecasting and fraud prevention, deep learning enables our engineers and data scientists to create better experiences for our users.

      TensorFlow has become a preferred deep learning library at Uber for a variety of reasons. To start, the framework is one of the most widely used open source frameworks for deep learning, which makes it easy to onboard new users. It also combines high performance with an ability to tinker with low-level model details—for instance, we can use both high-level APIs, such as Keras, and implement our own custom operators using NVIDIA’s CUDA toolkit.

      Uber has introduced Michelangelo (https://eng.uber.com/michelangelo/), an internal ML-as-a-service platform that democratizes machine learning and makes it easy to build and deploy these systems at scale. In this article, we pull back the curtain on Horovod, an open source component of Michelangelo’s deep learning toolkit which makes it easier to start—and speed up—distributed deep learning projects with TensorFlow:

      https://eng.uber.com/horovod/

      (Direct GitHub repo: https://github.com/uber/horovod)

      See more
      SciPy logo

      SciPy

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      Scientific Computing Tools for Python
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      PROS OF SCIPY
        Be the first to leave a pro
        CONS OF SCIPY
          Be the first to leave a con

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          Pandas logo

          Pandas

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          High-performance, easy-to-use data structures and data analysis tools for the Python programming language
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          PROS OF PANDAS
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            Easy data frame management
          • 2
            Extensive file format compatibility
          CONS OF PANDAS
            Be the first to leave a con

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            Server side

            We decided to use Python for our backend because it is one of the industry standard languages for data analysis and machine learning. It also has a lot of support due to its large user base.

            • Web Server: We chose Flask because we want to keep our machine learning / data analysis and the web server in the same language. Flask is easy to use and we all have experience with it. Postman will be used for creating and testing APIs due to its convenience.

            • Machine Learning: We decided to go with PyTorch for machine learning since it is one of the most popular libraries. It is also known to have an easier learning curve than other popular libraries such as Tensorflow. This is important because our team lacks ML experience and learning the tool as fast as possible would increase productivity.

            • Data Analysis: Some common Python libraries will be used to analyze our data. These include NumPy, Pandas , and matplotlib. These tools combined will help us learn the properties and characteristics of our data. Jupyter notebook will be used to help organize the data analysis process, and improve the code readability.

            Client side

            • UI: We decided to use React for the UI because it helps organize the data and variables of the application into components, making it very convenient to maintain our dashboard. Since React is one of the most popular front end frameworks right now, there will be a lot of support for it as well as a lot of potential new hires that are familiar with the framework. CSS 3 and HTML5 will be used for the basic styling and structure of the web app, as they are the most widely used front end languages.

            • State Management: We decided to use Redux to manage the state of the application since it works naturally to React. Our team also already has experience working with Redux which gave it a slight edge over the other state management libraries.

            • Data Visualization: We decided to use the React-based library Victory to visualize the data. They have very user friendly documentation on their official website which we find easy to learn from.

            Cache

            • Caching: We decided between Redis and memcached because they are two of the most popular open-source cache engines. We ultimately decided to use Redis to improve our web app performance mainly due to the extra functionalities it provides such as fine-tuning cache contents and durability.

            Database

            • Database: We decided to use a NoSQL database over a relational database because of its flexibility from not having a predefined schema. The user behavior analytics has to be flexible since the data we plan to store may change frequently. We decided on MongoDB because it is lightweight and we can easily host the database with MongoDB Atlas . Everyone on our team also has experience working with MongoDB.

            Infrastructure

            • Deployment: We decided to use Heroku over AWS, Azure, Google Cloud because it is free. Although there are advantages to the other cloud services, Heroku makes the most sense to our team because our primary goal is to build an MVP.

            Other Tools

            • Communication Slack will be used as the primary source of communication. It provides all the features needed for basic discussions. In terms of more interactive meetings, Zoom will be used for its video calls and screen sharing capabilities.

            • Source Control The project will be stored on GitHub and all code changes will be done though pull requests. This will help us keep the codebase clean and make it easy to revert changes when we need to.

            See more

            Should I continue learning Django or take this Spring opportunity? I have been coding in python for about 2 years. I am currently learning Django and I am enjoying it. I also have some knowledge of data science libraries (Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyTorch). I am currently enhancing my web development and software engineering skills and may shift later into data science since I came from a medical background. The issue is that I am offered now a very trustworthy 9 months program teaching Java/Spring. The graduates of this program work directly in well know tech companies. Although I have been planning to continue with my Python, the other opportunity makes me hesitant since it will put me to work in a specific roadmap with deadlines and mentors. I also found on glassdoor that Spring jobs are way more than Django. Should I apply for this program or continue my journey?

            See more