Putting text in top left corner of matplotlib plot

You can use text.

text(x, y, s, fontsize=12)

text coordinates can be given relative to the axis, so the position of your text will be independent of the size of the plot:

The default transform specifies that text is in data coords, alternatively, you can specify text in axis coords (0,0 is lower-left and 1,1 is upper-right). The example below places text in the center of the axes::

text(0.5, 0.5,'matplotlib',
     horizontalalignment='center',
     verticalalignment='center',
     transform = ax.transAxes)

To prevent the text to interfere with any point of your scatter is more difficult afaik. The easier method is to set y_axis (ymax in ylim((ymin,ymax))) to a value a bit higher than the max y-coordinate of your points. In this way you will always have this free space for the text.

EDIT: here you have an example:

In [17]: from pylab import figure, text, scatter, show
In [18]: f = figure()
In [19]: ax = f.add_subplot(111)
In [20]: scatter([3,5,2,6,8],[5,3,2,1,5])
Out[20]: <matplotlib.collections.CircleCollection object at 0x0000000007439A90>
In [21]: text(0.1, 0.9,'matplotlib', ha='center', va='center', transform=ax.transAxes)
Out[21]: <matplotlib.text.Text object at 0x0000000007415B38>
In [22]:

The ha and va parameters set the alignment of your text relative to the insertion point. ie. ha='left' is a good set to prevent a long text to go out of the left axis when the frame is reduced (made narrower) manually.

• matplotlib is somewhat different from when the original answer was posted
• matplotlib.pyplot.text
• matplotlib.axes.Axes.text

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure(figsize=(6, 6))
plt.text(0.1, 0.9, 'text', size=15, color='purple')

# or 

fig, axe = plt.subplots(figsize=(6, 6))
axe.text(0.1, 0.9, 'text', size=15, color='purple')

Output of Both

• From matplotlib: Precise text layout
  • You can precisely layout text in data or axes coordinates.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Build a rectangle in axes coords
left, width = .25, .5
bottom, height = .25, .5
right = left + width
top = bottom + height
ax = plt.gca()
p = plt.Rectangle((left, bottom), width, height, fill=False)
p.set_transform(ax.transAxes)
p.set_clip_on(False)
ax.add_patch(p)


ax.text(left, bottom, 'left top',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, bottom, 'left bottom',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='bottom',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, top, 'right bottom',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='bottom',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, top, 'right top',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, bottom, 'center top',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='top',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, 0.5 * (bottom + top), 'right center',
        horizontalalignment='right',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, 0.5 * (bottom + top), 'left center',
        horizontalalignment='left',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(0.5 * (left + right), 0.5 * (bottom + top), 'middle',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(right, 0.5 * (bottom + top), 'centered',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation='vertical',
        transform=ax.transAxes)

ax.text(left, top, 'rotated\nwith newlines',
        horizontalalignment='center',
        verticalalignment='center',
        rotation=45,
        transform=ax.transAxes)

plt.axis('off')

plt.show()

One solution would be to use the plt.legend function, even if you don't want an actual legend. You can specify the placement of the legend box by using the loc keyterm. More information can be found at this website but I've also included an example showing how to place a legend:

ax.scatter(xa,ya, marker='o', s=20, c="lightgreen", alpha=0.9)
ax.scatter(xb,yb, marker='o', s=20, c="dodgerblue", alpha=0.9)
ax.scatter(xc,yc marker='o', s=20, c="firebrick", alpha=1.0)
ax.scatter(xd,xd,xd, marker='o', s=20, c="goldenrod", alpha=0.9)
line1 = Line2D(range(10), range(10), marker='o', color="goldenrod")
line2 = Line2D(range(10), range(10), marker='o',color="firebrick")
line3 = Line2D(range(10), range(10), marker='o',color="lightgreen")
line4 = Line2D(range(10), range(10), marker='o',color="dodgerblue")
plt.legend((line1,line2,line3, line4),('line1','line2', 'line3', 'line4'),numpoints=1, loc=2) 

Note that because loc=2, the legend is in the upper-left corner of the plot. And if the text overlaps with the plot, you can make it smaller by using legend.fontsize, which will then make the legend smaller.