PyMOL is a powerful and comprehensive molecular visualization product for rendering and animating 3D molecular structures.
Cost / License
- Paid
- Open Source
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux

UCSF Chimera is described as 'Highly extensible program for interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data' and is an app. There are nine alternatives to UCSF Chimera for a variety of platforms, including Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and iPad apps. The best UCSF Chimera alternative is PyMOL. It's not free, so if you're looking for a free alternative, you could try Avogadro or Rasmol. Other great apps like UCSF Chimera are Jmol, VMD - Visual Molecular Dynamics, ChimeraX and Vipster.
PyMOL is a powerful and comprehensive molecular visualization product for rendering and animating 3D molecular structures.

Avogadro is an advanced molecule editor and visualizer designed for cross-platform use in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, materials science, and related areas.


RasMol is a computer program written for molecular graphics visualization intended and used primarily for the depiction and exploration of biological macromolecule structures, such as those found in the Protein Data Bank.


Jmol is a free, open source molecule viewer for students, educators, and researchers in chemistry and biochemistry. It is cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Unix systems.




VMD is a molecular visualization program for displaying, animating, and analyzing large biomolecular systems using 3-D graphics and built-in scripting.



UCSF ChimeraX (or simply ChimeraX) is the next-generation molecular visualization program from the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics (RBVI), following UCSF Chimera. ChimeraX can be downloaded free of charge for academic, government, nonprofit, and...
RasTop is a molecular visualization software adapted from the program RasMol, which was initially developed by Roger Sayle. RasTop is particularly adapted for educational purposes and for the rapid analysis of macromolecules at the bench.

Explore detailed 3D cell biology down to the molecular level, or tour life’s molecular machines. CellWalk is a beautiful new way for students to learn biology.



