The PLplot library can be used to create standard x-y plots, semi-log plots, log-log plots, contour plots, 3D surface plots, mesh plots, bar charts and pie charts. Multiple graphs (of the same or different sizes) may be placed on a single page with multiple lines in each graph.

A variety of output file devices such as Postscript, png, jpeg and others, as well as interactive devices such as xwin, tk, xterm and Tektronics devices are supported. There are also interfaces available to include the PLplot library in your application, e.g. for wxWidgets. New devices can be easily added by writing a small number of device dependent routines.

PLplot has core support for Unicode. This means plots can be labelled using the enormous selection of Unicode mathematical symbols and simple text layout (left to right) language scripts for many of our devices. For our cairo-related devices we also support complex text layout (CTL) languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Indic and Indic-derived CTL scripts such as Devanagari, Thai, Lao, and Tibetan.

Some devices support their own way of dealing with text, such as the Postscript driver (using postscript fonts), or the png and jpeg drivers (which use the Freetype library).

PLplot is free software primarily licensed under the LGPL.