Comparing RStudio and Positron Features

What is happening to RStudio?

Be assured that RStudio is not going away. RStudio is stable and actively supported, and there is no timeline to deprecate it. That being said, RStudio and Positron are at very different points in their respective lifecycles, which is relevant when making decisions about adoption. Positron is under much more active development, with a rapidly expanding set of features. RStudio’s development, on the other hand, is much more focused on bug fixes and product stability.

Features unique to RStudio

Some features are present in RStudio, but not in Positron as of today. Some of these features may eventually come to Positron, but if any of these are dealbreakers for you, that is a reason for you to stick with RStudio.

Features unique to Positron

Some features are available in Positron, but not in RStudio. If any of these features are very appealing to you, that is a reason to move some or perhaps all of your work to Positron.

  • Easy access to multiple R versions and multiple concurrent R sessions.
  • An integrated AI assistant that can “see” and, optionally, execute code in your active R (or Python) sessions, among many other capabilities.
  • Python as a first-class citizen, with support for data science workflows that is on par with R.
  • Support for other languages beyond R and Python, via built-in language intelligence or extensions.
  • An integrated Data Explorer for dataframes in your active R (or Python) sessions and for a variety data files (CSV, Parquet, etc.).
  • Extensibility via a large marketplace of 3rd party extensions.
  • Remote sessions, i.e. where the user interface is local but the compute is elsewhere.
Tip

It’s worth pointing out that using Positron is not an all-or-nothing decision. It is entirely reasonable to use Positron in some projects and RStudio in others. Likewise, within a specific project, some tasks might feel easier in Positron and others in RStudio. There is nothing irreversible or exclusive about interacting with the files that constitute a project from one IDE versus another.