rustplotlib 5.1.0

Matplotlib drop-in replacement powered by Rust — 50 plot types, 15 interpolation modes, 81 colormaps, up to 18.7x faster

RustPlotLib

Matplotlib reimplemented in Rust. A high-performance drop-in replacement for Python's matplotlib, built from scratch with a native Rust rendering engine.

No Python runtime dependency for rendering. No wrappers. No subprocess calls. Pure Rust rasterization exposed to Python via PyO3.

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Why RustPlotLib?

	matplotlib	Other Rust plotting libs	rustplotlib
Rendering engine	C/C++ (AGG)	None (wrap matplotlib or call Python)	Rust native (tiny-skia)
External dependencies	NumPy, Pillow, FreeType, etc.	Python + matplotlib required	Zero — self-contained
Performance	Baseline	Same or slower (subprocess overhead)	Up to 18.7x faster
Python API	Original	Rust-only or generates .py scripts	Drop-in replacement — same API
Approach	Interpreted + C extensions	Wrappers / code generators	Full reimplementation in Rust

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Installation

pip install rustplotlib

Supports Python 3.9-3.13 on macOS, Linux, and Windows (pre-built wheels available).

Or build from source (requires Rust 1.70+ and Python 3.9+):

git clone https://github.com/Thi4gon/rustplotlib.git
cd rustplotlib
pip install maturin
maturin develop --release

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Usage

Just swap your import — everything else stays the same:

# Before:
# import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# After:
import rustplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4], [1, 4, 2, 3], label="data")
plt.title("My Plot")
plt.xlabel("X")
plt.ylabel("Y")
plt.legend()
plt.grid(True)
plt.savefig("plot.png")
plt.show()

---

What's Implemented

2D Plot Types (40+ types)

Function	Description
plot()	Line plots with color, linestyle, linewidth, markers, markevery, labels, alpha, zorder
scatter()	Scatter plots with per-point sizes, colors, markers, alpha, zorder
bar() / barh()	Vertical and horizontal bar charts (stacked, hatch patterns, zorder)
hist()	Histograms with configurable bins
imshow()	Image/heatmap display with 70+ colormaps, bilinear interpolation, annotations
fill_between() / fill_betweenx()	Filled area between curves (vertical and horizontal)
fill()	Filled polygon from vertex arrays
errorbar()	Error bars with caps (xerr/yerr)
step()	Step plots (pre/post/mid)
pie()	Pie charts with labels
boxplot()	Box-and-whisker plots (Q1/median/Q3, whiskers, outliers)
violinplot()	Violin plots with Gaussian KDE
stem()	Stem plots with baseline
contour() / contourf()	Contour lines and filled contours (marching squares)
hexbin()	Hexagonal binning for 2D histograms
quiver()	Vector field arrows
streamplot()	Streamlines for vector fields (Euler integration)
stackplot()	Stacked area charts
broken_barh()	Broken horizontal bar charts
eventplot()	Event/raster plots
pcolormesh() / pcolor()	Pseudocolor plots for irregular grids
matshow()	Matrix display with integer ticks
radar()	Radar/spider charts
sankey()	Sankey flow diagrams
spy()	Sparsity pattern visualization
stairs()	Step-wise constant function with edges
ecdf()	Empirical cumulative distribution
triplot()	Triangulation edge drawing
hist2d()	2D histogram heatmap
specgram()	Spectrogram (STFT-based)
acorr() / xcorr()	Auto/cross correlation
psd()	Power spectral density (Welch)
magnitude_spectrum()	FFT magnitude
angle_spectrum() / phase_spectrum()	FFT phase
cohere() / csd()	Coherence / cross spectral density
semilogx() / semilogy() / loglog()	Convenience log-scale plots
arrow()	Arrow drawing
axline()	Infinite line through point with slope

3D Plot Types (7 types)

Function	Description
plot() (3D)	3D line plots
scatter() (3D)	3D scatter with depth sorting
plot_surface()	3D surface plots with colormaps
plot_wireframe()	3D wireframe plots
bar3d()	3D bar charts with shading
plot_trisurf()	3D triangulated surface
contour3D()	3D contour lines at Z offset

Layout & Figure

Function	Description
subplots(nrows, ncols)	Grid of axes with figsize/dpi
subplot(nrows, ncols, index)	Add single subplot
subplot_mosaic()	Named subplot layouts from ASCII art
figure(figsize, dpi)	Create new figure
suptitle()	Figure-level super title
subplots_adjust()	Control hspace/wspace between subplots
tight_layout()	Auto-adjust spacing
add_subplot(projection='3d')	Add 3D subplot
clf() / cla() / close()	Clear and close figures
gcf() / gca()	Get current figure/axes
subplot2grid()	Subplot at specific grid position
fig.add_gridspec()	GridSpec from figure
fig.legend()	Figure-level legend

Axes Customization

Function	Description
title() / set_title()	Plot title with fontsize
xlabel() / ylabel()	Axis labels with fontsize
set_xlim() / set_ylim()	Axis range limits
set_xscale('log') / set_yscale('log')	Logarithmic scale
set_xticks() / set_yticks()	Custom tick positions
set_xticklabels() / set_yticklabels()	Custom tick labels
tick_params()	Tick direction, length, width, labelsize
set_aspect('equal')	Equal aspect ratio
invert_xaxis() / invert_yaxis()	Invert axis direction
axis('off')	Hide axes completely
set_facecolor()	Axes background color
spines['right'].set_visible(False)	Spine customization
twinx() / twiny()	Secondary y-axis / x-axis
zorder	Drawing order control for all artists
hatch	Hatch patterns for bars (/, \\, `
legend()	Legend with line+marker swatches and positioning
grid()	Grid lines with color, linewidth, linestyle, alpha, which
text()	Positioned text annotations
annotate()	Text with arrow pointing to data
table()	Data table inside axes
axhline() / axvline()	Horizontal/vertical reference lines
axhspan() / axvspan()	Shaded horizontal/vertical regions
hlines() / vlines()	Multiple reference lines with bounds
colorbar()	Color scale bar for imshow/contour
get_xlim() / get_ylim()	Get current axis limits (functional)
clear()	Clear all artists from axes
ax.set(**kwargs)	Set multiple properties at once
minor=True in set_xticks/yticks	Minor tick support
bar_label()	Value labels on bars
set_xlabel(color=...)	Label color customization
title(loc='left')	Title alignment

Output Formats

Method	Description
savefig("file.png")	Raster PNG (with dpi, transparent, bbox_inches='tight')
savefig("file.svg")	Native vector SVG (real <line>, <text>, <rect> elements)
savefig("file.pdf")	PDF output
savefig("file.eps")	EPS output
show()	Interactive window with backend auto-detection
PdfPages	Multi-page PDF with zlib compression
pickle	Save/load figures with pickle
copy_to_clipboard()	Copy figure as PNG to system clipboard
to_json() / save_json()	Export figure state as JSON

Backends & Interactive

Feature	Description
Backend auto-detection	Automatically selects inline (Jupyter), Tk, or Agg backend
Tk backend	Interactive window with toolbar, zoom/pan, coordinate display
WebAgg backend	Browser-based interactive viewer via HTTP server
Navigation toolbar	Home, Back, Forward, Pan, Zoom, Save (Tk + WebAgg)
Event system	mpl_connect / mpl_disconnect with CallbackRegistry
Pick events	Artist hit testing backed by Rust (hit_test_points, hit_test_line)
Mouse/Key/Scroll events	Full event hierarchy: MouseEvent, KeyEvent, PickEvent, DrawEvent, ResizeEvent, CloseEvent
Jupyter rich display	_repr_png_(), _repr_svg_(), _repr_html_() on Figure
3D mouse rotation	Drag to rotate 3D view in Tk backend

Animation

Feature	Description
FuncAnimation	Function-based animation with blit support, pause/resume
ArtistAnimation	Frame-based animation from artist lists
GIF export	Save animations as GIF (via Pillow)
Live animation	Real-time animation in Tk backend

Layout Engines

Feature	Description
tight_layout()	Dynamic margins from text measurement (Rust)
constrained_layout=True	Constraint-based layout engine (Rust)
GridSpec(nrows, ncols)	Grid layout with rowspan/colspan
SubFigure	Nested sub-figures with independent layouts
Figure.add_axes([l,b,w,h])	Custom axes positioning
make_axes_locatable	Axes divider for colorbar positioning

Widgets (Rust-rendered)

Widget	Features
Slider	Track, thumb circle, label, value display, on_changed callbacks
RangeSlider	Tuple values, clamp, callbacks
Button	Background, border, label, on_clicked callbacks
CheckButtons	Toggle, get_status, callbacks
RadioButtons	Exclusive selection, value_selected
TextBox	on_submit, on_text_change, set_val
Cursor	Crosshair following mouse, on_moved callbacks
MultiCursor	Cursor spanning multiple axes

Transform System

Component	Description
Affine2D	2D affine matrix (rotate, scale, translate, compose, invert) — Rust
BlendedTransform	Separate X/Y transforms — Rust
ax.transData	Data coordinate transform
ax.transAxes	Axes coordinate transform (0-1)
fig.transFigure	Figure coordinate transform

Styles & Themes

Feature	Description
style.use('dark_background')	13 built-in themes (default, dark_background, ggplot, seaborn, bmh, fivethirtyeight, grayscale, Solarize_Light2, tableau-colorblind10, seaborn-whitegrid, seaborn-darkgrid, seaborn-dark, fast)
style.available	List all available styles
style.context('ggplot')	Context manager for temporary style
rcParams	Functional global configuration (30+ supported keys)
set_facecolor()	Figure and axes background colors

Colors

• Named: 140+ colors including all CSS/X11 colors (steelblue, coral, tomato, gold, crimson, dodgerblue, forestgreen, etc.)
• Shorthand: "r", "g", "b", "c", "m", "y", "k", "w"
• Hex: "#FF0000", "#f00", "#FF000080"
• RGB/RGBA tuples: (1.0, 0.0, 0.0), (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5)
• Grey/gray variants: both spellings supported

Linestyles & Markers

• Linestyles: - (solid), -- (dashed), -. (dashdot), : (dotted)
• Markers: . o s ^ v < > + x D d * p h H 8 | _ P X 1 2 3 4 (24 types)
• Format strings: "r--o" = red + dashed + circle markers (parsed in Rust)
• markevery: show marker every N points

Colormaps (81 base + reversed = ~162 total)

viridis plasma inferno magma cividis twilight twilight_shifted turbo hot cool coolwarm bwr seismic gray jet spring summer autumn winter copper bone pink binary ocean terrain rainbow Blues Reds Greens Oranges Purples Greys YlOrRd YlOrBr YlGnBu YlGn OrRd BuGn BuPu GnBu PuBu PuRd RdPu PuBuGn RdYlBu RdBu RdGy RdYlGn PiYG PRGn BrBG PuOr Spectral Set1 Set2 Set3 Pastel1 Pastel2 tab10 tab20 tab20b tab20c Paired Accent Dark2 afmhot brg CMRmap Wistia cubehelix hsv gnuplot gnuplot2 gist_earth gist_heat gist_ncar gist_rainbow gist_stern gist_yarg flag prism

All also available reversed with _r suffix.

Image Interpolation (15 modes)

nearest bilinear bicubic lanczos spline16 hanning hamming hermite kaiser quadric catrom gaussian bessel mitchell sinc

Text & Math Rendering

• Embedded DejaVu Sans font (no system font dependency)
• Full TeX math engine in Rust:
  • Greek letters (24 lowercase + 12 uppercase)
  • Subscript/superscript with Unicode characters
  • Stacked fractions (\frac{a}{b}) with horizontal bar
  • Square roots (\sqrt{x}) with radical sign
  • Integral/sum/product with limits (\int_a^b, \sum_{i=0}^n)
  • Accents: \hat, \tilde, \vec, \dot, \ddot, \overline, \underline
  • Delimiters: \left(, \right), \langle, \rangle, \lceil, \lfloor
  • Matrices with bracket rendering
  • 60+ math operators and symbols

Geographic Projections (5 types)

Projection	Function
Hammer	hammer_project(lon, lat)
Aitoff	aitoff_project(lon, lat)
Mollweide	mollweide_project(lon, lat)
Lambert Conformal Conic	lambert_project(lon, lat, lat1, lat2)
Stereographic	stereographic_project(lon, lat, lon0, lat0)

All with batch versions and generate_graticule() for grid lines.

Data Integration

• Pandas: plot directly from DataFrame/Series (optional dependency)
• NumPy: full array support
• NaN handling: automatic gaps in line plots for NaN/Inf values
• Dates: date2num(), num2date(), date formatters and locators
• Categorical axes: string-based x values automatically converted

Compatibility Modules (25 modules)

Module	Status
rustplotlib.pyplot	Full implementation (50+ functions)
rustplotlib.style	Full implementation (6 themes)
rustplotlib.animation	FuncAnimation + GIF export
rustplotlib.widgets	Functional (Slider, Button, CheckButtons, RadioButtons, TextBox, RangeSlider, Cursor)
rustplotlib.font_manager	FontProperties
rustplotlib.ticker	12 Formatters + 10 Locators (functional)
rustplotlib.patches	Rectangle, Circle, Polygon, FancyBboxPatch, Wedge, FancyArrowPatch
rustplotlib.colors	LinearSegmentedColormap, Normalize, LogNorm, BoundaryNorm
rustplotlib.dates	Date conversion, DateFormatter, DateLocator, Auto/Day/Month/Year/Hour/MinuteLocator
rustplotlib.gridspec	GridSpec, SubplotSpec
rustplotlib.backends	Backend system with auto-detection (inline/tk/agg), PdfPages
rustplotlib.backends.backend_base	FigureCanvasBase, FigureManagerBase, NavigationToolbar2
rustplotlib.backends.backend_tk	Tk interactive window with toolbar and events
rustplotlib.mpl_toolkits.mplot3d	Axes3D for 3D plotting
rustplotlib.cm	Colormap access by name
rustplotlib.collections	LineCollection, PathCollection, PatchCollection
rustplotlib.lines	Line2D with get/set methods
rustplotlib.text	Text, Annotation
rustplotlib.transforms	Bbox, Affine2D, BboxTransform
rustplotlib.patheffects	Stroke, withStroke, SimplePatchShadow
rustplotlib.spines	Spine
rustplotlib.axes	Axes class reference
rustplotlib.figure	Figure class with Jupyter rich display (_repr_png_, _repr_svg_, _repr_html_)
rustplotlib.events	MouseEvent, KeyEvent, DrawEvent, ResizeEvent, CloseEvent
rustplotlib.callback_registry	CallbackRegistry for mpl_connect/mpl_disconnect
rustplotlib.cycler	cycler compatibility

---

Examples

Subplots

import rustplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

fig, axes = plt.subplots(2, 2, figsize=(10, 8))

x = np.linspace(0, 10, 100)
axes[0][0].plot(x, np.sin(x), label="sin(x)")
axes[0][0].plot(x, np.cos(x), label="cos(x)", linestyle="--")
axes[0][0].set_title("Trigonometry")
axes[0][0].legend()
axes[0][0].grid(True)

axes[0][1].scatter(np.random.randn(200), np.random.randn(200), alpha=0.5)
axes[0][1].set_title("Random Scatter")

axes[1][0].bar([1, 2, 3, 4, 5], [3, 7, 2, 5, 8], color="green")
axes[1][0].set_title("Bar Chart")

axes[1][1].hist(np.random.randn(5000), bins=40, color="orange")
axes[1][1].set_title("Distribution")

fig.savefig("subplots.png")

3D Surface Plot

import rustplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10, 8))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')

X = np.linspace(-5, 5, 50)
Y = np.linspace(-5, 5, 50)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(X, Y)
Z = np.sin(np.sqrt(X**2 + Y**2))

ax.plot_surface(X.tolist(), Y.tolist(), Z.tolist(), cmap='viridis')
ax.set_xlabel("X")
ax.set_ylabel("Y")
ax.set_zlabel("Z")
plt.savefig("surface3d.png")

Dark Mode

import rustplotlib.pyplot as plt
import rustplotlib.style as style

style.use('dark_background')
plt.plot([1, 2, 3, 4], [1, 4, 2, 3], 'c-o', linewidth=2)
plt.title("Dark Mode")
plt.savefig("dark.png")

Animation

import rustplotlib.pyplot as plt
from rustplotlib.animation import FuncAnimation
import numpy as np

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
x = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 100)

def update(frame):
    ax.plot(x, np.sin(x + frame * 0.1), color='blue')
    ax.set_title(f"Frame {frame}")

anim = FuncAnimation(fig, update, frames=50)
anim.save("wave.gif")

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Performance Benchmark

Benchmarked against matplotlib on Apple Silicon (M-series, release build). Each test runs 10 iterations, averaged:

Benchmark	matplotlib	rustplotlib	Speedup
Line Plot (10k pts)	0.024s	0.005s	4.7x
Scatter (5k pts)	0.027s	0.020s	1.3x
Bar Chart (50 bars)	0.024s	0.004s	5.7x
Histogram (100k pts)	0.087s	0.005s	18.7x
Subplots 2x2	0.038s	0.010s	3.9x
Heatmap (100x100)	0.019s	0.005s	3.7x
Large Line (100k pts)	0.109s	0.110s	1.0x
Multi-line (20 lines)	0.085s	0.029s	2.9x
Error Bars	0.021s	0.004s	5.9x
Pie Chart	0.009s	0.004s	2.4x
SVG Output	0.021s	0.003s	7.6x
Full Styled Plot	0.018s	0.005s	3.9x
TOTAL	0.481s	0.203s	2.4x

Wins 11 out of 12 benchmarks. Up to 18.7x faster on histogram rendering.

Run the benchmark yourself:

maturin develop --release
python tests/test_benchmark.py

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Tech Stack

Component	Technology	Purpose
2D Rendering	tiny-skia	Rasterization (paths, shapes, antialiasing)
SVG Rendering	Custom SVG renderer	Native vector SVG output
Fonts	ab_glyph	Text rendering with embedded DejaVu Sans
PNG output	png	PNG encoding
Window	winit + softbuffer	Interactive display
3D Projection	Custom	Orthographic 3D-to-2D with camera control
Python bindings	PyO3 + maturin	Rust-to-Python bridge
NumPy interop	numpy (PyO3)	Array conversion

---

Architecture

Python: import rustplotlib.pyplot as plt
          |
          v
    pyplot.py (matplotlib-compatible API layer)
          |
          v
    PyO3 bridge (Rust <-> Python)
          |
          v
    Rust core:
      Figure --> Axes (2D) ---------> Artists (Line2D, Scatter, Bar, ...)
             |                              |
             --> Axes3D -----------> Artists3D (Line3D, Surface3D, ...)
                                           |
                                           v
                                    Transform / Camera
                                           |
                              +------------+------------+
                              |            |            |
                         tiny-skia    SvgRenderer    PDF gen
                         (raster)     (vector)      (document)
                              |            |            |
                             PNG          SVG          PDF

---

Security

• Zero unsafe blocks in the entire Rust codebase
• Path validation in savefig() (extension whitelist, path traversal rejection)
• Dimension validation (max 32768x32768 pixels)
• Unique temp file names (no symlink race conditions)
• Input validation on all PyO3 boundaries
• No .unwrap() on user-controlled data — proper error handling throughout

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! This is an open-source project under the MIT license.

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch
3. Open a PR against master
4. PRs require at least 1 review before merging

Project stats:

• 53 Rust source files — 30,000+ lines of native code
• 25+ Python modules — thin PyO3 wrappers
• 50 plot types (43 2D + 7 3D) — 100% of matplotlib plot types
• 81 colormaps + reversed = ~162 total (~95% of matplotlib)
• 550+ tests passing (including 27 rendering regression tests)
• 110/110 pyplot functions, 95/95 Axes methods, 36/36 Figure methods
• 15 interpolation modes: nearest, bilinear, bicubic, lanczos, spline16, hanning, hamming, hermite, kaiser, quadric, catrom, gaussian, bessel, mitchell, sinc
• 5 geographic projections: Hammer, Aitoff, Mollweide, Lambert, Stereographic
• 4 backends: Agg, Tk (interactive), Jupyter inline, WebAgg (browser)
• 4 output formats: PNG, SVG, PDF (multi-page), EPS
• Full TeX math engine: Greek, sub/superscript, fractions, sqrt, matrices
• Full transform system: Affine2D, BlendedTransform, transData/transAxes
• Full event system: mouse, keyboard, pick events with Rust hit testing
• Widgets: Slider, Button, CheckButtons, RadioButtons, TextBox (Rust rendering)
• Layout engines: tight layout, constrained layout, GridSpec rowspan/colspan, SubFigure
• Zero unsafe blocks

Remaining (need external dependencies):

• Qt/GTK/macOS backends (need PyQt5, PyGObject, PyObjC)
• Math font rendering (need Computer Modern .ttf files)
• Basemap coastlines (need Natural Earth shapefiles)

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License

MIT