Octave sits at an awkward half-way point between MATLAB and Python/R/Julia/etc. You get the shitty syntax of MATLAB at not quite MATLAB's speed and miss out on

Octave sits at an awkward half-way point between MATLAB and Python/R/Julia/etc. You get the shitty syntax of MATLAB at not quite MATLAB's speed and miss out on support as well as various incompatible toolboxes. So unless you have hard dependencies or lots of MATLAB code sitting around, Octave isn't that attractive an option. It's great for matrix/vector maths, though. If that's all you do -- go for it. Everything over and above that is a royal pain in MATLAB and, conversely, in Octave.