tidyterra
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Comparison · Analytics
Fulcrum vs vegan
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Fulcrum and vegan — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Fulcrum vs vegan: at a glance
| Feature | Fulcrum | vegan |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | Analytics | Analytics |
| Velocity score | 6.3 | 0.0 |
| Sparks · 30d | 0 | 0 |
| Top themes | gis, esri-migration, offline-maps, field-data-capture | community-ecology, ordination, deprecation, permutation-tests |
| Last editorial update | 9h ago | 56m ago |
| Website | — | Visit → |
What is Fulcrum?
Fulcrum is betting its whole map stack on Esri, with a hard Google Maps cutoff on September 1.
Fulcrum is a field data collection platform, and nearly every entry in the last month touches mapping. The web app ships weekly fix batches for layer rendering (KML/KMZ, MBTiles, ArcGIS Feature Services), while iOS and Android push near-weekly builds against the ArcGIS SDK. Feature work is thin right now; the visible surface is stabilization around a mapping engine migration already in flight.
What is vegan?
Community ecology's standard toolkit is retiring the functions a generation of scripts was built on.
vegan is the reference R package for ordination and diversity analysis in community ecology. The 2.7 line redesigned constrained ordination graphics from scratch, made adonis defunct in favor of adonis2, and moved permutation tests for partial RDA and db-RDA onto residualized predictors. The current 2.7-5 release is stabilization — parallel processing on Windows, ggvegan compatibility for tidy scores, and arrow label placement.
Fulcrum vs vegan: editorial side-by-side
Fulcrum
6.3ANALYTICS
Fulcrum is betting its whole map stack on Esri, with a hard Google Maps cutoff on September 1.
◆ Current state
Fulcrum is a field data collection platform, and nearly every entry in the last month touches mapping. The web app ships weekly fix batches for layer rendering (KML/KMZ, MBTiles, ArcGIS Feature Services), while iOS and Android push near-weekly builds against the ArcGIS SDK. Feature work is thin right now; the visible surface is stabilization around a mapping engine migration already in flight.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is a full consolidation onto Esri. The legacy Google Maps engine is being retired on September 1 with automatic migration for anyone who hasn't switched, and Esri now carries Google's satellite and street basemaps so the imagery argument is neutralized. Underneath, the mobile SDK moved to ArcGIS 300.0.0 and ONNX on-device inference was dropped for a new INFERENCE format with labels.txt support. Offline is the second thread: downloadable layers can now be updated in place rather than deleted and recreated.
◆ Prediction
Expect the weeks before September 1 to stay dominated by migration-shaped fixes and Esri feature parity work, with the MMPK layer and Photo FastFill early-access programs the most likely to graduate to general availability next.
vegan
0.0ANALYTICS
Community ecology's standard toolkit is retiring the functions a generation of scripts was built on.
◆ Current state
vegan is the reference R package for ordination and diversity analysis in community ecology. The 2.7 line redesigned constrained ordination graphics from scratch, made adonis defunct in favor of adonis2, and moved permutation tests for partial RDA and db-RDA onto residualized predictors. The current 2.7-5 release is stabilization — parallel processing on Windows, ggvegan compatibility for tidy scores, and arrow label placement.
◆ Where it's heading
Two long deprecation programs are converging. Plotting is being pushed out of the package: lattice functions are deprecated in favor of ggplot2 equivalents now living in ggvegan, a separate CRAN package, while vegan's own base graphics were rebuilt around independently configurable score types and pipe-based construction. Meanwhile the statistical core is being made internally consistent — add1 and drop1 no longer use different internal models, and summary is no longer an accepted route to ordination scores.
◆ Prediction
Expect the remaining lattice functions to go defunct and more plotting responsibility to shift to ggvegan, leaving vegan as the statistical engine with a thin base graphics layer.
Alternatives to Fulcrum and vegan
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 Fulcrum or vegan.
mapSpain
mapSpain's 1.0.0 broke every user cache to get the package onto modern foundations.
wasserportal
A Berlin groundwater scraper grew a full IoT publishing pipeline in two days.
cheapr
cheapr turned multi-threaded, and its next stop is a C++20 public API.
RadialMR
RadialMR's 2026 release corrects degrees of freedom that had been wrong since documentation.
mrbayes
mrbayes spent 2026 auditing its own Bayesian MR estimators for coding errors.
See all Fulcrum alternatives → · See all vegan alternatives →
Recent activity from Fulcrum and vegan
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 17h agoFulcrumWeb fixes: shared-view exports, MBTiles popups, KML and ArcGIS layers
- 3d agoFulcrumAndroid: update offline map layers in place, non-blocking Photo FastFill
- 3d agoFulcrumiOS fix: slow location resolution blocked record saves
- 8d agoFulcrumWeb: SSO email wording and ArcGIS/deck.gl version bumps
- 10d agoFulcrumAndroid fixes: ArcGIS stability, signature button, photo markup
- 10d agoFulcrumiOS fixes: basemap loading and black map screen
- 2mo agoveganParallel processing stabilized, especially on Windows
- 5mo agoveganLattice plotting deprecated as ggvegan reaches CRAN
- 10mo agoveganPartial RDA permutation tests adopt residualized predictors
- 1y agoveganOrdination graphics rebuilt and adonis made defunct ⚡
- 1y agoveganRelease chasing undefined behavior in a C function
- 1y agoveganpca, ca and pco added for unconstrained ordination
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Fulcrum and vegan?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Fulcrum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 0 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 Fulcrum better than vegan?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Fulcrum is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 0 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 Fulcrum?
Top Fulcrum alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Fulcrum alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fulcrum for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vegan?
Top vegan alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vegan alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vegan-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.