leaflet
leaflet relicensed to MIT and finished migrating off R's retired spatial stack
Comparison · Analytics
flexdashboard vs haven
A side-by-side editorial comparison of flexdashboard and haven — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:maintenance
flexdashboard vs haven: at a glance
What is flexdashboard?
flexdashboard has slowed to a fix-only trickle since the bslib theming rework
flexdashboard turns R Markdown into dashboard layouts, and its last structural release was 0.6.0's integration with bslib, which handed theming to shared tidyverse infrastructure and opened the Bootstrap 4 path. Everything after that is Bootstrap 5 compatibility, navigation polish, and rendering fixes — with a two-and-a-half-year gap between 0.6.2 and 0.6.3.
What is haven?
haven's release cadence has narrowed to compiler and R-devel upkeep.
haven is the tidyverse's bridge to SPSS, Stata and SAS files, wrapping the C ReadStat library. The last several releases are almost entirely maintenance: syncing vendored ReadStat and patching ahead of R-devel changes. The most recent substantive user-facing work landed in 2.5.2 and earlier.
flexdashboard vs haven: editorial side-by-side
flexdashboard
0.0ANALYTICS
flexdashboard has slowed to a fix-only trickle since the bslib theming rework
◆ Current state
flexdashboard turns R Markdown into dashboard layouts, and its last structural release was 0.6.0's integration with bslib, which handed theming to shared tidyverse infrastructure and opened the Bootstrap 4 path. Everything after that is Bootstrap 5 compatibility, navigation polish, and rendering fixes — with a two-and-a-half-year gap between 0.6.2 and 0.6.3.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has reached the stage where its releases exist to keep it working against newer Bootstrap, knitr and Quarto behavior rather than to add anything. Theming was outsourced to bslib, icons to Font Awesome, and the remaining surface is the layout syntax itself, which has not changed. The long release gaps are the clearest signal here.
◆ Prediction
The entries do not support a confident prediction of new capability; the realistic read is continued Bootstrap 5 compatibility fixes as bslib moves, at whatever cadence maintenance allows.
haven
0.0ANALYTICS
haven's release cadence has narrowed to compiler and R-devel upkeep.
◆ Current state
haven is the tidyverse's bridge to SPSS, Stata and SAS files, wrapping the C ReadStat library. The last several releases are almost entirely maintenance: syncing vendored ReadStat and patching ahead of R-devel changes. The most recent substantive user-facing work landed in 2.5.2 and earlier.
◆ Where it's heading
Development has shifted from extending the file-format surface to keeping a C dependency compiling against newer toolchains. The deprecation of write_sas() narrowed that surface deliberately, steering users to write_xpt() because the sas7bdat format is undocumented and unsupported upstream.
◆ Prediction
Expect further ReadStat sync releases triggered by compiler or R-devel breakage rather than new format support or writing features.
Alternatives to flexdashboard and haven
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 flexdashboard or haven.
ggpubr
ggpubr reached 1.0.0 with p-value formatting presets for specific journals
bigrquery
bigrquery went MIT, then handed its slowest path to the BigQuery Storage API
sparklyr
sparklyr now spends its releases absorbing dbplyr changes and feeding pysparklyr
Seurat
Seurat's centre of gravity has moved from single cells to spatial data and on-disk matrices
insight
insight quietly widens the set of model objects the easystats ecosystem can read
See all flexdashboard alternatives → · See all haven alternatives →
Recent activity from flexdashboard and haven
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agoflexdashboardBootstrap 5 box margins and theme.preset fixes
- 1y agohavenhaven 2.5.5 syncs ReadStat for stricter gcc diagnostics
- 2y agohavenhaven 2.5.4 patches for an upcoming R-devel change
- 3y agoflexdashboardNavigation dropdown icons and Bootstrap 5 page handling
- 3y agohavenhaven 2.5.3 patches for an upcoming R-devel change
- 3y agohavenhaven 2.5.2 fixes SAS catalog reads and deprecates write_sas()
- 3y agoflexdashboardLogo position regression from 0.6.0 fixed
- 3y agoflexdashboardbslib integration takes over dashboard theming
- 3y agohavenhaven 2.5.1 aligns labelled headers and fixes name repair
- 4y agohavenhaven 2.5.0 adds custom variable widths when writing files
- 5y agoflexdashboardFont Awesome icon sets supported
- 5y agoflexdashboardPandoc 2.0 compatibility fix
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between flexdashboard and haven?
Both compete on the same themes — maintenance — within Analytics. flexdashboard and haven 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 flexdashboard better than haven?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. flexdashboard and haven 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 flexdashboard?
Top flexdashboard alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "flexdashboard alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/flexdashboard for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to haven?
Top haven alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "haven alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/haven for the full list with editorial commentary on each.