API Reference

https://matplotlib.org/stable/api/index.html

Matplotlib interfaces

Matplotlib has two interfaces. See Matplotlib Application Interfaces (APIs) for a more detailed description of both and their recommended use cases.

Axes interface (object-based, explicit)

create a Figure and one or more Axes objects, then explicitly use methods on these objects to add data, configure limits, set labels etc.

API:

subplots: create Figure and Axes
axes: add data, limits, labels etc.
Figure: for figure-level methods

Example:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_title("Sample plot")
plt.show()

pyplot interface (function-based, implicit)

consists of functions in the pyplot module. Figure and Axes are manipulated through these functions and are only implicitly present in the background.

API:

matplotlib.pyplot

Example:

plt.plot(x, y)
plt.title("Sample plot")
plt.show()

Modules

Alphabetical list of modules:

matplotlib matplotlib.animation matplotlib.artist matplotlib.axes matplotlib.axis matplotlib.backend_bases matplotlib.backend_managers matplotlib.backend_tools matplotlib.backends matplotlib.bezier matplotlib.category matplotlib.cbook matplotlib.cm matplotlib.collections matplotlib.colorbar matplotlib.colorizer matplotlib.colors matplotlib.container matplotlib.contour matplotlib.dates matplotlib.dviread matplotlib.figure matplotlib.font_manager matplotlib.ft2font matplotlib.gridspec matplotlib.hatch matplotlib.image matplotlib.inset matplotlib.layout_engine matplotlib.legend matplotlib.legend_handler matplotlib.lines matplotlib.markers matplotlib.mathtext matplotlib.mlab matplotlib.offsetbox matplotlib.patches matplotlib.path matplotlib.patheffects matplotlib.pyplot matplotlib.projections matplotlib.quiver matplotlib.rcsetup matplotlib.sankey matplotlib.scale matplotlib.sphinxext.mathmpl matplotlib.sphinxext.plot_directive matplotlib.sphinxext.figmpl_directive matplotlib.sphinxext.roles matplotlib.spines matplotlib.style matplotlib.table matplotlib.testing matplotlib.text matplotlib.texmanager matplotlib.ticker matplotlib.transforms matplotlib.tri matplotlib.typing matplotlib.units matplotlib.widgets matplotlib._afm matplotlib._api matplotlib._docstring matplotlib._enums matplotlib._type1font matplotlib._tight_bbox matplotlib._tight_layout mpl_toolkits.mplot3d mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 mpl_toolkits.axisartist pylab