n2kanalysis
n2kanalysis has spent eight years wiring INLA models to an S3 bucket.
Comparison · Analytics
CatastRoNav vs cheapr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of CatastRoNav and cheapr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
CatastRoNav vs cheapr: at a glance
What is CatastRoNav?
Navarre's cadastre client finally reaches feature parity with its bigger Spanish sibling.
CatastRoNav wraps the Cadastre of Navarre, a Spanish region that publishes its own cadastral services separately from the national system. Until 1.0.0 the package could only fetch cadastral parcels via ATOM; it now retrieves buildings and addresses through ATOM as well and adds WMS INSPIRE layer access through catrnav_wms_get_layer(). The same release relicenses to GPL-2, moves requests to httr2 with retries and switches messaging to cli.
What is cheapr?
cheapr turned multi-threaded, and its next stop is a C++20 public API.
cheapr supplies lower-overhead replacements for base R's data manipulation primitives — subsetting, recycling, concatenation, attribute handling, data frame construction. Through 2025 it grew function by function: sset_df/sset_row/sset_col, list_as_df, cheapr_c, counts, str_coalesce, df_modify. The 1.5.0 release in April 2026 changed the nature of the package, adding parallelised math functions, user-settable thread counts, multi-threaded vector initialisers, and a SIMD-parallelised if_else_, with threading on by default at two threads.
CatastRoNav vs cheapr: editorial side-by-side
CatastRoNav
0.0ANALYTICS
Navarre's cadastre client finally reaches feature parity with its bigger Spanish sibling.
◆ Current state
CatastRoNav wraps the Cadastre of Navarre, a Spanish region that publishes its own cadastral services separately from the national system. Until 1.0.0 the package could only fetch cadastral parcels via ATOM; it now retrieves buildings and addresses through ATOM as well and adds WMS INSPIRE layer access through catrnav_wms_get_layer(). The same release relicenses to GPL-2, moves requests to httr2 with retries and switches messaging to cli.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being pulled into line with CatastRo, the maintainer's national-cadastre client: same transport, same UTF-8 normalization strategy, same option names falling back to the CatastRo equivalents. Coverage has been gated by what the Navarre Cadastre actually publishes — 0.1.0 said outright that further ATOM capabilities would arrive when the regional service made them available, and 1.0.0 is that promise landing.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next releases to track new Navarre service endpoints as they are published, and to inherit whatever maintenance pattern CatastRo adopts next.
cheapr
0.0ANALYTICS
cheapr turned multi-threaded, and its next stop is a C++20 public API.
◆ Current state
cheapr supplies lower-overhead replacements for base R's data manipulation primitives — subsetting, recycling, concatenation, attribute handling, data frame construction. Through 2025 it grew function by function: sset_df/sset_row/sset_col, list_as_df, cheapr_c, counts, str_coalesce, df_modify. The 1.5.0 release in April 2026 changed the nature of the package, adding parallelised math functions, user-settable thread counts, multi-threaded vector initialisers, and a SIMD-parallelised if_else_, with threading on by default at two threads.
◆ Where it's heading
Two arcs run at once. The visible one is parallelism: what began as single-threaded C shortcuts is becoming a threaded compute layer, and the notes state the C/C++ API is mid-rewrite with a stable form promised at 2.0.0 behind a C++20 requirement. The quieter one is R C API compliance — 1.5.1 removed R_MissingArg, R_UnboundValue, Rf_findVar and Rf_findVarinFrame, the non-API entry points being closed off upstream. The 1.5.x patches since are narrow crash fixes, which reads as consolidation before the 2.0.0 break.
◆ Prediction
Expect 2.0.0 to land the stable C/C++ API behind a C++20 toolchain floor, with more of the existing function surface threaded in the interim. The package has announced both moves in its own release notes.
Alternatives to CatastRoNav and cheapr
Other Analytics 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 CatastRoNav or cheapr.
n1qn1c
A Fortran-descended optimizer got thread-safe, then found two flags that never worked.
ggstatsplot
ggstatsplot reached 1.0 by adding tests, having outsourced its statistics years ago.
collapse
collapse got a JSS paper and a 7x fmean speedup in the same release.
gtsummary
gtsummary is quietly rebuilding itself around analysis results data, one table verb at a time.
broadcast
broadcast is filling in NumPy-style array broadcasting for R, operator by operator.
See all CatastRoNav alternatives → · See all cheapr alternatives →
Recent activity from CatastRoNav and cheapr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoCatastRoNavBuildings, addresses and WMS layers arrive in 1.0.0 ⚡
- 1mo agocheaprrep_len_ crash on shrinking lengths fixed
- 4mo agocheaprNon-API R internals removed
- 4mo agocheaprParallelised math, thread control, and a C API rewrite ⚡
- 1y agocheaprSubsetting speedups; sset_col negative-index crash fixed
- 1y agocheaprdf_modify added; attribute helpers renamed for intent
- 1y agocheaprcounts and str_coalesce added; reconstruct renamed to rebuild
- 2y agoCatastRoNavATOM parcel retrieval and a caching system
- 3y agoCatastRoNavGeometry validity fix for returned sf objects
- 3y agoCatastRoNavFirst release opens the Navarre cadastre to R
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between CatastRoNav and cheapr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. CatastRoNav and cheapr 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 CatastRoNav better than cheapr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. CatastRoNav and cheapr 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 Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to CatastRoNav?
Top CatastRoNav alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "CatastRoNav alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/catastronav for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to cheapr?
Top cheapr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cheapr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cheapr-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.