HydroPortailStats
France's national flood statistics, ported out of Fortran and into R.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
ggdist vs Retool
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggdist and Retool — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
ggdist vs Retool: at a glance
What is ggdist?
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
ggdist supplies ggplot2 with a compositional vocabulary for distributions — slabs, intervals, dotplots and the sub-geometries that combine them. The last three years moved it from a drawing library to an estimation library: bounded density estimation with Sheather-Jones bandwidth became the default, weights propagate through every density, interval and point summary, and blurred dotplots render Monte Carlo standard error as visual fuzz. The 2025 release rounds this out with per-geometry thickness subscales and settable global defaults.
What is Retool?
Retool is fencing in its app-building agent — plan mode above, row-level data policies below.
Releases arrive several times a week and split cleanly. One line extends the app-building agent: standing building context, multiple threads per branch, and now a plan mode that shows intended changes before they land. The other tightens administration: PostgreSQL access policies in public beta, BYOK token accounting, an admin onboarding hub, plus self-hosted release and migration notices.
ggdist vs Retool: editorial side-by-side
ggdist
0.0INFRA · APIS
The grammar of uncertainty visualization, now drawing the uncertainty in its own estimates.
◆ Current state
ggdist supplies ggplot2 with a compositional vocabulary for distributions — slabs, intervals, dotplots and the sub-geometries that combine them. The last three years moved it from a drawing library to an estimation library: bounded density estimation with Sheather-Jones bandwidth became the default, weights propagate through every density, interval and point summary, and blurred dotplots render Monte Carlo standard error as visual fuzz. The 2025 release rounds this out with per-geometry thickness subscales and settable global defaults.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run in parallel and keep converging. One is statistical: pluggable density estimators arrived first, then became the default, then gained weights and quantile histograms. The other is compositional: sub-geometries acquired their own guides, then their own scales, so a slab's thickness axis is now a first-class annotated dimension. Cadence has stretched from twice-yearly to roughly annual, with the recent work tightening existing surface rather than opening new.
◆ Prediction
Subguides gained subscales a release later, so the remaining asymmetry is in the sub-geometry system rather than the statistics; expect the next release to continue that fill-in work.
Retool
5.0INFRA · APIS
Retool is fencing in its app-building agent — plan mode above, row-level data policies below.
◆ Current state
Releases arrive several times a week and split cleanly. One line extends the app-building agent: standing building context, multiple threads per branch, and now a plan mode that shows intended changes before they land. The other tightens administration: PostgreSQL access policies in public beta, BYOK token accounting, an admin onboarding hub, plus self-hosted release and migration notices.
◆ Where it's heading
The two lines are the same bet. Retool is making agent-built apps acceptable to organizations that cannot let a generated app decide what data it reads, so every agent capability is paired with a constraint — instructions the agent must follow, a plan the reviewer sees, and access policies enforced at the resource rather than in app code. The self-hosted channel keeps pace, which matters for exactly the buyers those controls target.
◆ Prediction
Expect access policies to extend past PostgreSQL to other resource types as they leave beta, and further review or approval steps around the app-building agent.
Alternatives to ggdist and Retool
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 ggdist or Retool.
bsvarSIGNs
Sign, zero and narrative restrictions brought into the bsvars ecosystem.
estimatr
Fast design-based estimators for experiments, coasting on CRAN patches.
ipaddress
IP address vectors for R that hit 1.0 and then went quiet.
ltertools
A column-key toolkit for stitching decades of ecological field data into one table.
finnts
Microsoft's automated forecasting framework, still mostly a one-maintainer effort.
See all ggdist alternatives → · See all Retool alternatives →
Recent activity from ggdist and Retool
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoRetoolAccess policies for PostgreSQL resources in public beta
- 1d agoRetoolPlan mode for app building
- 12d agoRetoolRetool 4.35 Edge for self-hosted instances
- 14d agoRetoolManage app building agent context
- 18d agoRetoolAdmin onboarding hub now available in the Settings Overview page
- 19d agoRetoolBYOK AI token management
- 1y agoggdistPer-geometry thickness subscales and settable defaults
- 2y agoggdistBlurred dotplots draw Monte Carlo error; weights reach every estimator ⚡
- 2y agoggdistC++ dotplot binning and safer bandwidth fallbacks
- 3y agoggdistBounded density becomes the default; existing charts change ⚡
- 3y agoggdistCategorical distributions, hex layouts, pluggable density estimators
- 4y agoggdistComputed variables shared across sub-geometries
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ggdist and Retool?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Retool is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 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 ggdist better than Retool?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Retool is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ggdist?
Top ggdist alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggdist alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggdist for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Retool?
Top Retool alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Retool alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/retool for the full list with editorial commentary on each.