Plotly's Streaming API enables your Plotly plots to update in real-time, without refreshing your browser. In other words, users can continuously send data to Plotly's servers and visualize this data in real-time.

For example, imagine that you have a thermometer (hooked to an Arduino for example) in your attic and you would like to monitor the temperature readings from your laptop. Plotly together with its streaming API makes this project easy to achieve.

With Ploly's Streaming API:

Everyone looking at a Plotly streaming plot sees the same data, updating at the same time. Like all Plotly plots, Plotly streaming plots are immediately shareable, by shortlink or as embedded in website or an IPython notebook. Owners of Plotly plot can edit their with the Plotly web GUI while all of the viewers of the plot will see the changes update live.

And for the skeptical among us, it's fast: plots update up to 20 times per second.

In this section, we present examples of how to make Plotly streaming plots. Readers looking for info about the nuts and bolts of Plotly's streaming API should refer to this link.