Label Propagation

Fast community detection for large-scale networks

Label Propagation detects communities by iteratively propagating node labels through the network - nodes adopt the most common label among their neighbors.

What It Computes

Community ID for each node, optimized for speed over precision.

When to Use It

Large graphs (10M+ edges) where speed matters
Real-time community detection
Quick exploration before running Louvain

Performance

Time: O(V + E) - Linear!
Space: O(V)
Scales to: 100M+ edges

Example

vs Louvain

Faster: 5-10x faster than Louvain
Less precise: Slightly lower modularity
Non-deterministic: Results vary by iteration order

Use Label Propagation when: Speed > precision
Use Louvain when: Quality > speed