rnaturalearth
rnaturalearth finished its sp exit and is now optimising how the data actually arrives.
Comparison · Analytics
forecast vs writexl
A side-by-side editorial comparison of forecast and writexl — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
forecast vs writexl: at a glance
What is forecast?
After years of pure maintenance, forecast 9.0.0 reopens the package
forecast is the long-established R forecasting package that fable was meant to succeed. For several years its releases were RNG fixes, base-R compatibility and documentation. Then 9.0.0 arrived with a batch of new model constructors, wider prediction-interval support and a rewritten accuracy() built on S3 methods.
What is writexl?
writexl spent nine years refusing to do formatting, then shipped all of it in 2.0.0.
For most of its history writexl was a deliberately minimal wrapper: bump the vendored libxlsxwriter, handle NA and Date coercion correctly, support a list of data frames for multiple sheets, and nothing else. 2.0.0, released August 2026, changes that — near-full libxlsxwriter coverage, cell/worksheet/workbook formatting, cell comments, an `xl_cell_general` class carrying value, formula and hyperlink, a cell-by-cell refactor, libxlsxwriter 1.2.4, and memory-safety work. It landed the same day as 1.5.4, a typo fix on the old line.
forecast vs writexl: editorial side-by-side
forecast
0.0ANALYTICS
After years of pure maintenance, forecast 9.0.0 reopens the package
◆ Current state
forecast is the long-established R forecasting package that fable was meant to succeed. For several years its releases were RNG fixes, base-R compatibility and documentation. Then 9.0.0 arrived with a batch of new model constructors, wider prediction-interval support and a rewritten accuracy() built on S3 methods.
◆ Where it's heading
The major version reframes forecast around explicit *_model() constructors — mean, random walk, spline, theta, Croston — rather than the older function-per-method style, and the 9.0.x patches since have been performance and argument-handling cleanups on top. That is an active maintenance line, not a package winding down in favour of fable.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued 9.0.x patches consolidating the new constructors and their forecast methods, with the older interfaces kept working alongside them.
writexl
6.3ANALYTICS
writexl spent nine years refusing to do formatting, then shipped all of it in 2.0.0.
◆ Current state
For most of its history writexl was a deliberately minimal wrapper: bump the vendored libxlsxwriter, handle NA and Date coercion correctly, support a list of data frames for multiple sheets, and nothing else. 2.0.0, released August 2026, changes that — near-full libxlsxwriter coverage, cell/worksheet/workbook formatting, cell comments, an `xl_cell_general` class carrying value, formula and hyperlink, a cell-by-cell refactor, libxlsxwriter 1.2.4, and memory-safety work. It landed the same day as 1.5.4, a typo fix on the old line.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has changed category. Its selling point was being the dependency-free, opinion-free way to get a data frame into xlsx; 2.0.0 makes it a formatting-capable writer that now compares itself against openxlsx2 in its own test suite. The cell-by-cell refactor is what made that possible and is also the largest structural change in the package's history. Note that a single contributor drove essentially all of it.
◆ Prediction
Expect follow-up releases fixing edge cases in the new formatting and comment APIs — the cell-by-cell rewrite is too large to land clean, and the 2.0.0 notes already mention an off-by-one in date columns.
Alternatives to forecast and writexl
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 forecast or writexl.
rgbif
rgbif is steadily pushing users off paged searching and onto real downloads.
rstanarm
rstanarm is community-maintained now, tracking Stan and lme4 rather than adding models.
taxa
taxa started a ground-up rewrite in 2021 and has published almost nothing since.
rotl
rotl's whole release history is keeping name matching honest against a moving taxonomy.
taxize
taxize spends its releases absorbing other people's API changes, one dead source at a time.
See all forecast alternatives → · See all writexl alternatives →
Recent activity from forecast and writexl
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 8d agowritexlwritexl 2.0.0 adds formatting, comments and full libxlsxwriter coverage ⚡
- 8d agowritexlwritexl 1.5.4 fixes a documentation typo
- 4mo agoforecastFixes for checkresiduals() and mstl() lambda handling
- 5mo agoforecastFaster ARFIMA search and forecast.mlm() argument handling
- 7mo agoforecastforecast 9.0.0 adds five model constructors and rewrites accuracy() ⚡
- 1y agoforecastDocumentation and bug-fix release
- 2y agoforecastRNG state and base-R head/tail compatibility
- 2y agoforecastMuch faster hfitted() for ARIMA and ETS models
- 5y agowritexlwritexl 1.4.0 updates libxlsxwriter to 1.0.3
- 6y agowritexlwritexl 1.2 fixes NA in formulas and hyperlinks
- 7y agowritexlwritexl 1.1 fixes NA strings and bit64 coercion
- 8y agowritexlwritexl 1.0 writes Date values as datetimes
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between forecast and writexl?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. writexl is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is forecast better than writexl?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. writexl is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to forecast?
Top forecast alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "forecast alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/forecast-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to writexl?
Top writexl alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "writexl alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/writexl for the full list with editorial commentary on each.