leaflet
leaflet relicensed to MIT and finished migrating off R's retired spatial stack
Comparison · Analytics
haven vs insight
A side-by-side editorial comparison of haven and insight — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
haven vs insight: at a glance
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.
What is insight?
insight quietly widens the set of model objects the easystats ecosystem can read
insight is the extraction layer under the easystats packages — it answers what a fitted model's parameters, data, variance and priors are, for whatever object it is handed. The 1.4.x and 1.5.x releases read as a steady widening of that support list: tidymodels workflows, cmdstanr fits, rstpm2 survival models, lavaan variance-covariance, mice imputations.
haven vs insight: editorial side-by-side
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.
insight
0.0ANALYTICS
insight quietly widens the set of model objects the easystats ecosystem can read
◆ Current state
insight is the extraction layer under the easystats packages — it answers what a fitted model's parameters, data, variance and priors are, for whatever object it is handed. The 1.4.x and 1.5.x releases read as a steady widening of that support list: tidymodels workflows, cmdstanr fits, rstpm2 survival models, lavaan variance-covariance, mice imputations.
◆ Where it's heading
Two things move together here. The support list grows toward objects produced outside the easystats world, and performance work targets the helpers that everything else calls — compact_list(), is_empty_object(), find_parameters() on mgcv models. New functions appear occasionally (get_simulated(), vcovFPC()) but the center of gravity is coverage, not capability.
◆ Prediction
Expect further model classes to be added as downstream easystats packages need them, and continued alignment with R-devel behavior changes like the weighted-residuals revision.
Alternatives to haven and insight
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 haven or insight.
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
flexdashboard
flexdashboard has slowed to a fix-only trickle since the bslib theming rework
See all haven alternatives → · See all insight alternatives →
Recent activity from haven and insight
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoinsightcompact_list() performance and lavaan variance-covariance support
- 2mo agoinsightcmdstanr support and finite-population-corrected variance
- 4mo agoinsightget_simulated() added; rstpm2 survival models supported
- 6mo agoinsightWeighted residuals revised to match R 4.6.0
- 6mo agoinsighttidymodels workflow objects become readable
- 8mo agoinsightlme4 convergence and fixest data extraction 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 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 agohavenhaven 2.5.1 aligns labelled headers and fixes name repair
- 4y agohavenhaven 2.5.0 adds custom variable widths when writing files
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between haven and insight?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. haven and insight 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 haven better than insight?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. haven and insight 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 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.
What are the best alternatives to insight?
Top insight alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "insight alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/insight for the full list with editorial commentary on each.