List of R software and tools

This is a list of software and programming tools for the R programming language, including IDEs, package managers, libraries, debugging tools, numerical and scientific computing tools, and related projects.

Integrated development environments (IDEs) and editors

See also: Comparison of R IDEs

• Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) — Emacs interface for R and other statistical software
• Jupyter — supports R through IRkernel ^[1]
• RKWard — KDE/Qt-based IDE and GUI for R ^[2]
• RStudio — popular cross-platform IDE for R
• StatET — Eclipse-based IDE ^[3]
• Visual Studio Code — supports R via extensions (R Tools for Visual Studio)

Graphical user interfaces

• Deducer — GUI front-end and data analysis package ^[4]
• jamovi — GUI statistical environment built on R for data analysis and performing statistical tests ^[5]
• Java GUI for R — cross-platform R console, script editor, and spreadsheet/data view.
• Rattle GUI — data mining GUI for R ^[6]
• R Commander (Rcmdr) — basic GUI for statistics in R, often used for teaching and introductory work.

Implementations of R

See also: R implementations

• CXXR — experimental R engine with modernized C++ codebase ^[7]
• FastR — R language implementation on the GraalVM ^[8]
• GNU R — main implementation of R, maintained by the R Core Team, and distributed as part of the GNU Project.
• pqR — “pretty quick R” ^[9]
• Renjin — JVM-based interpreter for R

R packages

Main article: R packages

• Bioconductor — repository for bioinformatics and computational biology R packages
• CRAN — Comprehensive R Archive Network, primary repository for R packages.
• devtools — simplifies R package development ^[10]
• Knitr — integration of R code into LaTeX, LyX, HTML, Markdown, AsciiDoc, and reStructuredText documents.
• Packrat — dependency management system ^[11]
• renv — project-specific package management system ^[12]
• R CMD build / R CMD check — R package build and validation tools ^[13]
• Tidyverse — Ggplot2, dplyr, and other packages.

Mathematical and numerical libraries

• lme4 — linear mixed-effects models ^[14]
• Matrix — sparse and dense matrix computations ^[15]
• mgcv — generalized additive models ^[16]
• nlme — nonlinear mixed-effects models ^[17]
• numDeriv — numerical derivatives ^[18]
• optim — built-in optimization functions ^[19]
• optimx – provides a replacement and extension of the optim ^[20]
• Rmpfr — multiple-precision floating-point arithmetic ^[21]

Scientific and statistical libraries

• dplyr — data manipulation toolkit
• edgeR — differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data ^[22]
• forecast — time series forecasting ^[23]
• ggplot2 — data visualization based on the grammar of graphics ^[24]
• phyloseq — analysis of microbiome census data ^[25]
• shiny — interactive web applications
• survival — survival analysis ^[26]
• tidyr — tidy data reshaping ^[27]

Debugging and performance tools

• bench – accurately benchmark and analyze execution times ^[28]
• lineprof — line-by-line profiling tool ^[29]
• microbenchmark — benchmarking ^[30]
• profvis — interactive R profiler ^[31]
• Rcpp — integration of R and C++ for performance ^[32]
• Rprof — built-in R profiler ^[33]

Parallel and high-performance computing

• BiocParallel — parallel evaluation framework for R, used across Bioconductor packages. ^[34]
• doParallel – provides a parallel backend for the foreach package, enabling easy parallel execution of R code. ^[35]
• foreach — looping construct for parallel execution ^[36]
• future — unified parallel and distributed computing ^[37]
• parallel — built-in R package for parallel processing ^[38]
• Rmpi — R interface to the Message Passing Interface ^[39]
• snow — simple network of workstations ^[40]

Machine learning and AI libraries

• caret — training and tuning for machine learning models ^[41]
• keras — R interface to Keras deep learning ^[42]
• mlbench — collection of artificial and real-world benchmark datasets for evaluating machine learning algorithms ^[43]
• mlr — machine learning ^[44]
• mlr3 — modern successor to mlr ^[45]
• randomForest — ensemble learning using random forests ^[46]
• tidymodels — collection of R packages for machine learning and modeling, designed with tidyverse principles. ^[47]
• torch — R interface to PyTorch ^[48]
• xgboost — gradient boosting framework with R bindings ^[49]

Documentation and code analysis tools

• covr — test coverage ^[50]
• lintr — static code analysis ^[51]
• roxygen2 — documentation generation for R packages ^{[52] [53]}
• styler — code formatter for R scripts and packages ^[54]

Testing frameworks

• checkmate — fast argument checks and assertions for R functions ^[55]
• RUnit — implementing a standard Unit Testing framework ^[56]
• testthat — unit testing framework ^{[57] [58]}
• tinytest — lightweight unit testing framework ^[59]

See also

• Data science
• gretl — open-source software for econometrics that can integrate with R
• List of numerical libraries
• Lists of programming software development tools by language
• Statistical software

External links

• awesome-R – GitHub list of R software
• The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
• Bioconductor project
• RStudio / Posit IDE
• Jupyter Project

References

1. "GitHub - IRkernel/IRkernel: R kernel for Jupyter". github.com. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
2. "RKWard". rkward.kde.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
3. "Eclipse StatET: Tooling for the R language | projects.eclipse.org". projects.eclipse.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
4. "CRAN: Package Deducer". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
5. "jamovi - open statistical software for the desktop and cloud". www.jamovi.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
6. "Rattle – Togaware". rattle.togaware.com. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
7. "CXXR: Refactorising R into C++ - Introduction". www.cs.kent.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
8. "GitHub - oracle/fastr: A high-performance implementation of the R programming language, built on GraalVM". github.com. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
9. "GitHub - radfordneal/pqR: pqR - a "pretty quick" version of R". github.com. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
10. "Tools to Make Developing R Packages Easier • devtools". devtools.r-lib.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
11. "Packrat: Reproducible package management for R". rstudio.github.io. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
12. "Project Environments • renv". rstudio.github.io. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
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14. "CRAN: Package lme4". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
15. "CRAN: Package Matrix". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
16. "CRAN: Package mgcv". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
17. "CRAN: Package nlme". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
18. "CRAN: Package numDeriv". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
19. "R: General-purpose Optimization". stat.ethz.ch. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
20. "CRAN: Package optimx". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
21. "CRAN: Package Rmpfr". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
22. "Bioconductor - edgeR". bioconductor.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
23. "CRAN: Package forecast". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
24. "edgeR: differential expression analysis of digital gene expression data - User's Guide" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-04-03.
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27. "CRAN: Package tidyr". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
28. "CRAN: Package bench". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
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32. "CRAN: Package Rcpp". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
33. "Rprof function - RDocumentation". www.rdocumentation.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
34. "Bioconductor - BiocParallel". www.bioconductor.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
35. "CRAN: Package doParallel". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
36. "Using the foreach package". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
37. "CRAN: Package future". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
38. "Help for package parallel". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
39. "CRAN: Package Rmpi". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
40. "CRAN: Package snow". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
41. "CRAN: Package caret". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
42. "CRAN: Package keras". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
43. "CRAN: Package mlbench". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
44. "CRAN: Package mlr". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
45. "Machine Learning in R - Next Generation • mlr3". mlr3.mlr-org.com. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
46. "Package 'randomForest'" (PDF). July 23, 2025. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-20.
47. "tidymodels". www.tidymodels.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
48. "CRAN: Package torch". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
49. "CRAN: Package xgboost". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
50. "CRAN: Package covr". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
51. "A Linter for R Code • lintr". lintr.r-lib.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
52. "In-Line Documentation for R • roxygen2". roxygen2.r-lib.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
53. "CRAN: Package roxygen2". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
54. "CRAN: Package styler". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
55. "CRAN: Package checkmate". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
56. "CRAN: Package RUnit". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
57. "Unit Testing for R • testthat". testthat.r-lib.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
58. "CRAN: Package testthat". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.
59. "CRAN: Package tinytest". cran.r-project.org. Retrieved 2025-12-01.