MATLAB vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
MATLAB
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
MatLab is a predictive analytics and computing platform based on a proprietary programming language. MatLab is used across industry and academia.
$49
per student license
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.
$45
per month
Pricing
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
Student
$49
per student license
Home
$149
perpetual license
Education
$250
per year
Education
$500
perpetual license
Standard
$860
per year
Standard
2,150
perpetual license
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MATLABVisual Studio
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio
Considered Both Products
MATLAB
Chose MATLAB
Slow for prototyping using c# and the language is not as well supported for new employee training
Chose MATLAB
When I am not using MATLAB, I use C # and OpenGL library.
Chose MATLAB
SageMath was an open source software. It did not have the complete tool set and support that Matlab had in order to meet our needs. Although we had to pay for Matlab, it was easier to use and faster to get work done with. We had other students who also like Matlab as it was …
Visual Studio
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
MATLAB and QT are way more different than Visual Studio. Despite of being famous as per their IDE environment, they would not stand much comparison with VS Visual Studio IDEs. because, MATLAB and QT are limited edition and feature related Visual Studio IDEs, and they stick to …
Best Alternatives
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Statistics
IBM SPSS Statistics
Score 8.2 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Alteryx Platform
Alteryx Platform
Score 9.1 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Alteryx Platform
Alteryx Platform
Score 9.1 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(53 ratings)
9.0
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.9
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(7 ratings)
8.8
(15 ratings)
User Testimonials
MATLABMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
MathWorks
MATLAB really does best for solving computational problems in math and engineering. Especially when you have to use a lot of functions in your solving process, or if you have a nonlinear equation that must be iteratively solved. [MATLAB] can also perform things like integration and derivation on your equations that you put into it.
Read full review
Microsoft
When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
Read full review
Pros
MathWorks
  • It has a very user friendly library which helps users learn this software fairly quickly in a short span of time.
  • The graphical user interface provided by the software is really good.
  • The code that a person writes allows options for debugging.
  • One can visualize the flow of control of their code inside MATLAB.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
  • If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
  • The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.
Read full review
Cons
MathWorks
  • MatLab is pricier than most of its competitors and because of this reason, many organizations are moving towards cheaper alternatives - mostly Python.
  • MatLab is inefficient when it comes to performing a large number of iterations. It gets laggy and often crashes. Python is better in this regard.
  • There is a limited number of hardware options (mostly NI) that can be connected directly to the data acquisition toolbox.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
  • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
  • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
MathWorks
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
Read full review
Usability
MathWorks
MATLAB is pretty easy to use. You can extend its capabilities using the programming interface. Very flexible capabilities when it comes to graphical presentation of your data (so many different kinds of options for your plotting needs). Anytime you are working with large data sets, or with matrices, MATLAB is likely to be very helpful.
Read full review
Microsoft
I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.
Read full review
Support Rating
MathWorks
The built-in search engine is not as performing as I wish it would be. However, the YouTube channel has a vast library of informative video that can help understanding the software. Also, many other software have a nice bridge into MATLAB, which makes it very versatile. Overall, the support for MATLAB is good.
Read full review
Microsoft
There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
Read full review
In-Person Training
MathWorks
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
Read full review
Online Training
MathWorks
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
MathWorks
How MATLAB compares to its competition or similar open access tools like R (programming language) or SciLab is that it's simply more powerful and capable. It embraces a wider spectrum of possibilities for far more fields than any other environment. R, for example, is intended primarily for the area of statistical computing. SciLab, on the other hand, is a similar open access tool that falls very short in its computing capabilities. It's much slower when running larger scripts and isn't documented or supported nearly as well as MATLAB.
Read full review
Microsoft
I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
Read full review
Return on Investment
MathWorks
  • MATLAB helps us quickly sort through large sets of data because we keep the same script each time we run an analyzation, making it very efficient to run this whole process.
  • The software makes it super easy for us to create plots that we can then show to investors or clients to display our data.
  • We are also looking to create an app for our product, and we will not be able to do that on MATLAB, therefore creating a limiting issue and a new learning curve for a programming language.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
  • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
  • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
Read full review
ScreenShots