vcfR
A genomics workhorse whose visible release feed stops dead in mid-2020.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
ggfootball vs powerly
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ggfootball and powerly — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
ggfootball vs powerly: at a glance
What is ggfootball?
A football-viz package just swapped scraping for an API and broke its own output to do it.
ggfootball is a small R package for plotting expected-goals and shot data, sourced from Understat. Four releases are visible. The 0.2.x line was argument tidying and dependency pruning; 0.3.0 replaced the data-acquisition layer wholesale, moving get_match_shots() from HTML parsing onto Understat's AJAX endpoints and changing the returned column names in the process.
What is powerly?
A dormant sample-size package woke up in 2025 with parallel backends and a three-release DOI farce.
powerly implements a simulation-based method for choosing sample sizes in psychological network models. It sat untouched from September 2022 until August 2025, then shipped five releases in two days. v1.10.0 is the substantive one: parabar parallel backends with progress tracking, validation restricted to specific sample sizes, and warnings when the user picks argument values the method cannot support.
ggfootball vs powerly: editorial side-by-side
ggfootball
0.0INFRA · APIS
A football-viz package just swapped scraping for an API and broke its own output to do it.
◆ Current state
ggfootball is a small R package for plotting expected-goals and shot data, sourced from Understat. Four releases are visible. The 0.2.x line was argument tidying and dependency pruning; 0.3.0 replaced the data-acquisition layer wholesale, moving get_match_shots() from HTML parsing onto Understat's AJAX endpoints and changing the returned column names in the process.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is away from scraped HTML and toward a thinner, more defensible package: four dependencies dropped in 0.3.0 on top of qdapRegex in 0.2.1, input validation added, error messages rewritten. Both breaking changes so far were accepted rather than deferred, which reads as a maintainer treating pre-1.0 as the window to get the shape right. The package is willing to break callers for structural reasons, not cosmetic ones.
◆ Prediction
With the scraper rebuilt and the dependency surface trimmed, the next releases are likely to stabilise the new column names and extend the plotting side, which has seen nothing since 0.2.0. A 1.0 would be the signal that the data structure is now considered fixed.
powerly
0.0INFRA · APIS
A dormant sample-size package woke up in 2025 with parallel backends and a three-release DOI farce.
◆ Current state
powerly implements a simulation-based method for choosing sample sizes in psychological network models. It sat untouched from September 2022 until August 2025, then shipped five releases in two days. v1.10.0 is the substantive one: parabar parallel backends with progress tracking, validation restricted to specific sample sizes, and warnings when the user picks argument values the method cannot support.
◆ Where it's heading
The reawakening tracks the underlying manuscript reaching publication — v1.9.0 is largely citation, DOI, and website work around a published paper, with CI and documentation debt cleared at the same time. Feature work resumed only after that housekeeping, and it points at usability rather than method: better feedback, better progress reporting, the ability to validate one sample size instead of a whole grid. Three of the five 2025 releases exist only to fix a DOI in the package documentation, one of them undoing the previous one.
◆ Prediction
With the paper published and the parallel-backend request from issue #8 finally closed, further releases most likely continue the usability line — more guardrails on argument choice — rather than extending the statistical method itself.
Alternatives to ggfootball and powerly
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 ggfootball or powerly.
dialr
The R phone-number package stopped only parsing numbers and started asking them where they are.
ggVennDiagram
A Venn diagram package whose public release notes say almost nothing — including about its copyright cleanup.
ordinalsimr
A Shiny app for choosing the right ordinal test reached CRAN in a single 90-minute burst of tags.
transltr
A new R localization package that reached CRAN and immediately downgraded itself to experimental.
hereR
An R client for HERE's location APIs, shaped almost entirely by what the vendor exposes next.
See all ggfootball alternatives → · See all powerly alternatives →
Recent activity from ggfootball and powerly
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agoggfootballggfootball 0.3.0 ⚡
- 6mo agoggfootballggfootball 0.2.2
- 11mo agopowerlyParallel backends with progress tracking, plus targeted validation
- 11mo agopowerlyDOI markup restored in package documentation
- 11mo agopowerlyDOI markup removed from package documentation
- 11mo agopowerlyIncorrect DOI corrected in package documentation
- 11mo agopowerlyThree-year gap closed with citation refresh and an osqp dependency drop
- 1y agoggfootballggfootball 0.2.1
- 1y agoggfootballggfootball 0.2.0
- 3y agopowerlyInvalid HTML nesting removed from function documentation
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ggfootball and powerly?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. ggfootball and powerly 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 ggfootball better than powerly?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. ggfootball and powerly 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ggfootball?
Top ggfootball alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ggfootball alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ggfootball for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to powerly?
Top powerly alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "powerly alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/powerly for the full list with editorial commentary on each.