ColorBrewer

ColorBrewer compared with Adobe Color, Coolors and Viridis palettes
ColorBrewer	Adobe Color	Coolors	Viridis palettes
Basis of the palettes: Provides ready-made schemes for sequential, diverging and qualitative data with 3 to 12 classes, so the scheme type follows the type of data on the map or chart.	Basis of the palettes: Builds themes from colour-harmony rules or from an image, so the starting point is a design choice and not the data type.	Basis of the palettes: Generates random 5-colour palettes and offers a library of user-created palettes, with an image picker to extract colours from a picture.	Basis of the palettes: A fixed set of colour maps for graphs that are perceptually uniform, including when converted to black and white for printing.
Colour vision and print checks: Schemes can be filtered for colorblind safe, print friendly and photocopy safe use, and a preview shows them on roads, cities, borders and terrain.	Colour vision and print checks: Accessibility tools flag conflicts between swatches for three types of colour blindness and show simulated views of a theme.	Colour vision and print checks: The accessibility tool is a contrast checker that evaluates colour pairs against WCAG.	Colour vision and print checks: Designed for readers with common forms of colour vision deficiency, so no extra filtering step is needed once the map is chosen.
Outputs and formats: Gives HEX, RGB and CMYK values, and exports a permalink, an ASE file, GIMP and Inkscape palettes, a JavaScript array or CSS classes.	Outputs and formats: Themes can be copied or downloaded as CSS, XML or LESS and saved to Creative Cloud Libraries for use in Photoshop and Illustrator.	Outputs and formats: Exports PNG, PDF, SVG, SCSS, CSS or ASE, and palettes can be shared by URL. Some formats are limited to the web app.	Outputs and formats: Delivered as an R package with ggplot2 bindings for discrete and continuous scales, plus a lighter package without the ggplot2 dependency.
Licence and cost model: The page shows a copyright notice for Brewer, Harrower and Pennsylvania State University and links the source code on GitHub, without stating a licence.		Licence and cost model: Core features are free, the free tier caps saved palettes and projects, and a paid Pro tier lifts those limits.	Licence and cost model: Released under the MIT licence and distributed through CRAN.

ColorBrewer compared with Adobe Color, Coolors and Viridis palettes

ColorBrewer

Adobe Color

Coolors

Viridis palettes

Basis of the palettes: Provides ready-made schemes for sequential, diverging and qualitative data with 3 to 12 classes, so the scheme type follows the type of data on the map or chart.

Basis of the palettes: Builds themes from colour-harmony rules or from an image, so the starting point is a design choice and not the data type.

Basis of the palettes: Generates random 5-colour palettes and offers a library of user-created palettes, with an image picker to extract colours from a picture.

Basis of the palettes: A fixed set of colour maps for graphs that are perceptually uniform, including when converted to black and white for printing.

Colour vision and print checks: Schemes can be filtered for colorblind safe, print friendly and photocopy safe use, and a preview shows them on roads, cities, borders and terrain.

Colour vision and print checks: Accessibility tools flag conflicts between swatches for three types of colour blindness and show simulated views of a theme.

Colour vision and print checks: The accessibility tool is a contrast checker that evaluates colour pairs against WCAG.

Colour vision and print checks: Designed for readers with common forms of colour vision deficiency, so no extra filtering step is needed once the map is chosen.

Outputs and formats: Gives HEX, RGB and CMYK values, and exports a permalink, an ASE file, GIMP and Inkscape palettes, a JavaScript array or CSS classes.

Outputs and formats: Themes can be copied or downloaded as CSS, XML or LESS and saved to Creative Cloud Libraries for use in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Outputs and formats: Exports PNG, PDF, SVG, SCSS, CSS or ASE, and palettes can be shared by URL. Some formats are limited to the web app.

Outputs and formats: Delivered as an R package with ggplot2 bindings for discrete and continuous scales, plus a lighter package without the ggplot2 dependency.

Licence and cost model: The page shows a copyright notice for Brewer, Harrower and Pennsylvania State University and links the source code on GitHub, without stating a licence.

Licence and cost model: Core features are free, the free tier caps saved palettes and projects, and a paid Pro tier lifts those limits.

Licence and cost model: Released under the MIT licence and distributed through CRAN.