gnuplot is a command-line program that can generate two- and three-dimensional plots of functions, data, and data fits.
License: Open Source
MATLAB is a powerful commercial software suite aimed at advanced mathematical computations and engineering tasks, while GnuPlot is an open-source tool focused primarily on data visualization. MATLAB offers extensive features and support for various applications, but comes at a cost, whereas GnuPlot is free but may lack some advanced functionalities.