Matplotlib is a plotting library for the Python programming language and its numerical mathematics extension NumPy. It provides an object-oriented API for embedding plots into applications using general-purpose GUI toolkits like Tkinter, wxPython, Qt, or GTK+. There is also a procedural "pylab" interface based on a state machine (like OpenGL), designed to closely resemble that of MATLAB, though its use is discouraged. SciPy makes use of Matplotlib.
Matplotlib was originally written by John D. Hunter, since then it has an active development community, and is distributed under a BSD-style license. Michael Droettboom was nominated as matplotlib's lead developer shortly before John Hunter's death in August 2012, and further joined by Thomas Caswell.
Matplotlib 2.0.x supports Python versions 2.7 through 3.6. Python 3 support started with Matplotlib 1.2. Matplotlib 1.4 is the last version to support Python 2.6. Matplotlib has pledged to not support Python 2 past 2020 by signing the Python 3 Statement.
Pyplot is a Matplotlib module which provides a MATLAB-like interface. Matplotlib is designed to be as usable as MATLAB, with the ability to use Python, and the advantage of being free and open-source.
Several toolkits are available which extend Matplotlib functionality. Some are separate downloads, others ship with the Matplotlib source code but have external dependencies.
Basemap : map plotting with various map projections, coastlines, and political boundaries.
Cartopy: a mapping library featuring object-oriented map projection definitions, and arbitrary point, line, polygon and image transformation capabilities.
Excel tools: utilities for exchanging data with Microsoft Excel.
GTK tools: interface to the GTK+ library.
Qt interface.
Mplot3d: 3-D plots.
Natgrid: interface to the natgrid library for gridding irregularly spaced data..
matplotlib2tikz: export to Pgfplots for smooth integration into LaTeX documents.