lifecycle
lifecycle gave the tidyverse the word superseded, then spent years tuning who gets warned
Comparison · Infra & APIs
bench vs usethis
A side-by-side editorial comparison of bench and usethis — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
bench vs usethis: at a glance
What is bench?
bench has settled into slow, careful upkeep of R's benchmarking workhorse.
bench provides high-precision timing and memory profiling for R expressions, and is the measurement tool much of the tidyverse reaches for. Releases arrive roughly yearly and are dominated by small API corrections, CRAN compliance work, and keeping pace with tidyverse minimum-R requirements.
What is usethis?
usethis swaps in the Air formatter and stops assuming RStudio is the editor
usethis is the tidyverse's project-scaffolding tool and, unlike much of the r-lib cohort, is still actively developed. Recent work moves it off its own assumptions: the cli package replaced its homegrown UI layer in 3.0.0, and 3.2.0 replaced tidy-style formatting with Air while widening what counts as a project root.
bench vs usethis: editorial side-by-side
bench
0.0INFRA · APIS
bench has settled into slow, careful upkeep of R's benchmarking workhorse.
◆ Current state
bench provides high-precision timing and memory profiling for R expressions, and is the measurement tool much of the tidyverse reaches for. Releases arrive roughly yearly and are dominated by small API corrections, CRAN compliance work, and keeping pace with tidyverse minimum-R requirements.
◆ Where it's heading
The measurement surface has been effectively frozen since 1.1.0 added process-level memory tracking. Everything since trims rough edges — quieter progress output, consistent .grid handling, modern ggplot2 internals — rather than extending what the package can measure.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued maintenance releases driven by CRAN checks and ggplot2 or tidyverse deprecations, not new measurement capabilities.
usethis
0.0INFRA · APIS
usethis swaps in the Air formatter and stops assuming RStudio is the editor
◆ Current state
usethis is the tidyverse's project-scaffolding tool and, unlike much of the r-lib cohort, is still actively developed. Recent work moves it off its own assumptions: the cli package replaced its homegrown UI layer in 3.0.0, and 3.2.0 replaced tidy-style formatting with Air while widening what counts as a project root.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is de-RStudio-ing. Project detection now recognizes a VS Code settings file, a Quarto config, or an renv lockfile; use_course() opens folders in Positron as readily as RStudio; Quarto is a first-class vignette and project format. usethis is being rebuilt around the editor and format plurality that has grown up around R, and the pre-3.0 RStudio-and-styler era is being deprecated out.
◆ Prediction
Expect Quarto and Positron support to keep filling in - create_quarto_project() is still flagged experimental - and further deprecation of the RStudio-specific and styler-era helpers.
Alternatives to bench and usethis
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either bench or usethis.
waldo
waldo keeps shedding dependencies while teaching its diff engine new object systems
pkgdown
pkgdown now generates llms.txt and a markdown copy of every documentation page
knitr
knitr adds OpenTelemetry tracing, turning document builds into observable pipelines
lintr
lintr makes the native pipe the default rule and clears out a decade of deprecations
covr
covr's coverage tooling has been stable to the point of dormancy since 2022
See all bench alternatives → · See all usethis alternatives →
Recent activity from bench and usethis
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11mo agousethiscreate_quarto_project() exits early without the Quarto CLI
- 11mo agousethisuse_air() adopts the Air formatter; project detection widens ⚡
- 1y agobenchbench 1.1.4 quiets press() and raises the R floor to 4.0
- 1y agousethisuse_vignette() and use_article() support Quarto
- 2y agousethisUI moves to cli; Travis and AppVeyor helpers removed
- 2y agousethisCRAN-requested documentation fixes
- 3y agousethisVersion comparisons always pass character input
- 3y agobenchbench 1.1.3 fixes tibble truncation and CRAN warnings
- 4y agobenchbench 1.1.2 relicenses to MIT under a new maintainer
- 6y agobenchbench 1.1.1 always includes memory columns in mark() output
- 6y agobenchbench 1.1.0 adds process-level memory tracking beyond the GC heap
- 6y agobenchbench 1.0.4 fixes examples on R without memory profiling
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between bench and usethis?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. bench and usethis are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is bench better than usethis?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. bench and usethis are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to bench?
Top bench alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "bench alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/bench-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to usethis?
Top usethis alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "usethis alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/usethis for the full list with editorial commentary on each.