Observable overview

Observable offers two ways of working: production-grade data apps built with Observable Framework, or reactive JavaScript notebooks for fast exploration and prototyping.

Data apps

Data apps

The open-source Observable Framework is a static site generator that lets you prepare data in any language (SQL, Python, R, Rust, Go…) and then design beautiful, fast-loading custom reports and dashboards in Markdown and JavaScript, with Observable Plot and other leading libraries built in.

When you connect your data app to build on Observable Cloud, we re-run your data loaders automatically on schedule so your pages are always fast and fresh for everyone. Share your app securely and see analytics on who’s using which parts of it.

Learn more about data apps →

Notebooks

Notebooks

With Observable notebooks, users can mix Markdown, SQL, and JavaScript for fast ad-hoc exploratory data analysis. You never have to start from scratch thanks to thousands of examples to fork, an expansive standard library tailored for data, code snippets for quick inputs and visualizations, and low-code table and chart cells. Multiplayer live-coding with coworkers is as easy as sending them a URL, so more people in your organization can explore and discuss your data.

When your notebook is ready to be productionized, convert it to a page in your data app to make it fast and clean.

Learn more about notebooks →