| igraph | |
|---|---|
| Original authors | Gábor Csárdi and Tamás Nepusz |
| Developers | Gábor Csárdi, Tamás Nepusz, Szabolcs Horvát, Vincent Traag, Fabio Zanini and Daniel Noom |
| Initial release | 2006 |
| Stable release | 1.0.1[1] 
/ 26 December 2025 |
| Written in | C and C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Science software |
| License | GPL-2.0-or-later |
| Website | igraph |
| Repository | |
igraph is a library collection for creating and manipulating graphs and analyzing networks. It is written in C and also exists as Python and R packages.[2] There exists moreover an interface for Mathematica.[3] The software is widely used in academic research in network science and related fields. The publication that introduces the software has 13502 citations as of July 3, 2024 according to Google Scholar.
igraph was originally developed by Gábor Csárdi and Tamás Nepusz.[4] It is written in the C programming language in order to achieve good performance and it is freely available under GNU General Public License Version 2.
Basic properties
edit
The three most important properties of igraph that shaped its development are as follows:[4]
- igraph is capable of handling large networks efficiently
- it can be productively used with a high-level programming language
- interactive and non-interactive usage are both supported
Characteristics
editThe software is open source, source code can be downloaded from the project's GitHub page.[5] There are several open source software packages that use igraph functions. As an example, R packages tnet,[6] igraphtosonia[7] and cccd[8] depend on igraph R package. Users can use igraph on many operating systems. The C library and R and Python packages need the respective software, otherwise igraph is portable. The C library of igraph is well documented[9] as well as the R package[10] and the Python package[11]
Functions
editigraph can be used to generate graphs, compute centrality measures and path length based properties as well as graph components and graph motifs. It also can be used for degree-preserving randomization. igraph can read and write file formats such as Pajek, GraphML, LGL, NCOL, DIMACS, and GML, as well as simple edge lists.[12] The library contains several layout tools as well.[4]
References
edit- ^ "Release igraph 1.0.1". Retrieved 16 February 2026.
- ^ "igraph - The network analysis package". Retrieved 2021-11-12.
- ^ "IGraphM". IGraph/M is an igraph interface for Mathematica. 2016-07-11. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
- ^ a b c "Gábor Csárdi, Tamás Nepusz: The igraph software package for complex network research. InterJournal Complex Systems, 1695, 2006". InterJournal Complex Systems. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
- ^ "Igraph development team". GitHub.
- ^ "CRAN - Package tnet". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2015-06-05.
- ^ "CRAN - Package igraphtosonia". cran.r-project.org. 29 October 2012. Retrieved 2015-06-05.
- ^ "CRAN - Package cccd". cran.r-project.org. 2 June 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-05.
- ^ "igraph library".
- ^ "R/igraph".
- ^ "python-igraph".
- ^ "python-igraph".
