Positron – A next-generation data science IDE
88 comments
·July 21, 2025ZeroCool2u
i000
What is the alternative? Posit princing is absurd. Even academia is charged arm and leg - and the value, very questionable.
hadley
We do discount heavily for academia: get 50% off for research and 100% off (i.e. free) for teaching. But I do get that our pro products largely solve problems that folks encounter in larger enterprises, and you may not see the value inside an academic department. I'm also always happy to learn how we could do better, please feel free to reach out to hadley@posit.co.
ZeroCool2u
Agreed, the value is nonsense.
This is what we use: https://domino.ai/ The marketing is a bit intense on the website, but the docs are pretty good: https://docs.dominodatalab.com/en/cloud/user_guide/71a047/wh...
They definitely target large scale companies, but you can use their SaaS offering and it can be relatively affordable. The best part is the flexibility and scaling, but the license model is awesome too. There's no usage based billing, you just pay a flat license fee per user that writes code and for the underlying cloud costs and they'll deploy it on GCP, AWS, or Azure.
They're used by a lot of large companies, but academia as well to replace or augment on-prem HPC clusters. That's what we used them for as well.
benreesman
It's a shame that they don't have you writing marketing copy! The docs are indeed a lot more reasonable looking (to me at least). I work for a small proprietary fund and not some Godzilla company these days so maybe I'm just not the audience, but whew, for purchasing decision makers with subject matter background, that home page would have been a back button real fast if it wasn't linked from your thoughtful comment.
I'm interested in your opinion as a user on a bit of a new conundrum for me: for as many jobs / contracts as I can remember, the data science was central enough that we were building it ourselves from like, the object store up.
But in my current role, I'm managing a whole different kind of infrastructure that pulls in very different directions and the people who need to interact with data range from full-time quants to people with very little programming experience and so I'm kinda peeking around for an all-in-one solution. Log the rows here, connect the notebook here, right this way to your comprehensive dashboards and graphs with great defaults.
Is this what I should be looking at? The code that needs to run on the data is your standard statistical and numerics Python type stuff (and if R was available it would probably get used but I don't need it): I need a dataframe of all the foo from date to date and I want to run a regression and maybe set up a little Monte Carlo thing. Hey that one is really useful, let's make it compute that every night and put it on the wall.
I think we'd pay a lot for an answer here and I really don't want to like, break out pyarrow and start setting up tables.
sieste
Positron looks like the next version of Rstudio, which is currently free. Do you think the plan is to phase out support for the free product and push users into the paid one?
jmcphers
Positron inherits many ideas from RStudio, but is a separate project with an intentionally different set of tradeoffs; it gains multi-language/multi-session support, better configuration/extensibility, etc. but at the expense of RStudio's simplicity and support for many R-only workflows.
We're still investing in RStudio and while the products have some overlap there's no attempt to convert people from one to the other.
(I work at Posit on both of these products)
i000
I am talking about the RStudio Server and Connect - these are really expensive. One of the sales reps claimed that it is so expensive because they are a PBC and support open-source development. As in if they were just for profit it would be cheaper, but we should feel good about paying more. I could not take it.
qsort
I don't want to dunk too hard on this as it seems to be reasonably well made, but how are we making a data science IDE without a good SQL client? I might be biased but that's a major part of the workflow. You're already losing against PyCharm or Visual Studio (not code, the real one) simply because of that.
I appreciate that full IDEs are heavy tools, but when I just need an editor I go with vim, if I have to do real work why not take out the power tools?
juliasilge
I work on Positron, and I do not entirely disagree with you! We do have support for managing connections from Python and R: https://positron.posit.co/connections-pane.html
But we have some pretty big aspirations around expanding our SQL support, based on the features we have already built like that Connections pane, our Data Explorer, our Observable support via Quarto, etc. We plan to invest in this area over the coming months, starting in Q4 this year.
qsort
Appreciate the response, sorry if I'm being a bit direct but as you probably know that's the style that works the best on a forum like this one.
I'll keep tabs on you guys, my DS colleagues might be interested in the project.
notnmeyer
it looks like it is based on vsc. there’s got to be a decent sql client extension, right?
qsort
You're welcome to suggest one that has 10% of the functionality that with PyCharm you take for granted.
Graphical table creator? View and export ER schemas? SQL Syntax and autocomplete in .sql files AND within literal strings in your code? Query explainer?
Yeah, I don't think so.
NeutralForest
Then why use this instead of VSCode with a couple extensions?
jmcphers
You can in fact get something "pretty close" to Positron by adding and configuring a whole bunch of VS Code extensions, adjusting the layout, etc. However it's fiddly and time-consuming work (and quite challenging for novice users); the resulting UX can be pretty disjointed, too.
Positron provides a batteries-included experience that lets you work with Python and R out of the box; it's easier to get started, everything's already set up for data work, and the tools all work together smoothly. At least, that's the goal. :-)
(disclaimer - I work on Positron)
williamstein
Not open source: “You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the software.”
alterom
While this is "based on" the open source codebase of VSCode, it's very much unclear from the project page which features and dependencies aren't open source or even free-as-in-beer (..and may require a paid subscription, enterprise plan purchase, premium account, etc).
I.e., where they are making money off of this.
One clear indication that there are strings attached is that they're bundling a specialized GenAI assistant with the IDE.
Wish it was made clear in the FAQ. It doesn't cover this at all.
juliasilge
Hello! I work on Positron. We outline some answers here: https://positron.posit.co/faqs.html#how-can-i-use-positron-w...
tl;dr is that the desktop app (including remote SSH sessions) is free to use with a permissive license (no account needed, no subscription, commercial use is OK, etc), but using Positron in a server mode does require a paid subscription.
teruakohatu
Can it be run through a web browser like VS Code and RStudio?
Why did you relicense it under Elastic License 2.0 from VSCode’s MIT?
A better alternative would be proprietary extensions under a different license like Microsoft does.
juliasilge
Yes, but that is the server mode that is not free to use. If you want a free mode that lets you connect to a server, you might want to check out the remote SSH support: https://positron.posit.co/remote-ssh.html
We talk a bit about why we chose the Elastic license here: https://positron.posit.co/licensing.html
We have thought pretty carefully about what kind of functionality works well in extensions (in fact, we build and maintain a number of extensions!) and came to the decision that the more integrated data science experience we wanted to make required forking.
throwaway328
Emacs is the only truly next-generation data science IDE, and the last-generation one too.
(Hiding behind my couch after writing that)
kleinishere
What packages and workflow specifically do you use? I haven’t come across many gentle introductions so looking for clues on what’s a reasonable first step that’s well maintained with good docs.
throwaway328
I am not a scientist, and was primarily having a laugh with my comment.
That said, I do know that the type of person who likes configuring things very in-depth can set up intricate and powerful workflows in Emacs. I don't know what kind of data science IDE specifically you're interested in putting together, but here's a general article:
https://michaelneuper.com/posts/replace-jupyter-notebook-wit...
There's also this MOOC on reproducible research in French and English from Inria, where you're encouraged to follow the course in one of three ways: Jupyter, RStudio, or in Emacs' Org-Mode. I'd love to do it, but can't really justify spending the time at the minute.
https://www.fun-mooc.fr/en/courses/reproducible-research-met...
Creator of org-mode is Carsten Dominik, who is an astronomer by trade, so, it's a scientist's tool. A few of his talks are listed on this page, if you're interested in going straight to the source:
Koshcheiushko
Can you elaborate, how?
throwaway328
See my reply in the other thread, where I dutifully elaborate.
mirkodrummer
Wow can't we escape the vscode fork black hole anymore right?
n42
"Days Since Last VSCode Fork", when?
this seems unmaintained https://dayssincelastvscodefork.com/
90s_dev
To be fair, the Monaco team did an amazing thing. It's not clear to me just how much of VS Code's complexity is essential to its genius, but if anyone ever creates a slim version that does 90% of the work in 10% of the code, it would forever change editing like VS Code did. It would be great if it was portable too, but it's hard to get that without pulling in HTML + JS + CSS as dependencies. Maybe as a Dear ImGui extension?
jmcphers
VS Code's complexity is due in large part to its extensibility. It has the biggest, most robust extension API of any modern editor. Extensions don't get to run on the main/UI thread but run in a separate process that communicates with the main window over RPCs. This necessitates a lot of plumbing and layered generics but makes the main UI fast/stable and was a key innovation over other editors at the time (cough Atom cough).
The API is so good that a lot of core VS Code behavior (e.g. Github integration, support for lots of languages) is implemented in the form of built-in extensions.
It is possible to get 80% of VS Code's functionality with 10-20% of the code if you just bake everything into one monolith, but this has been tried repeatedly and it keeps failing in part because the extension ecosystem and attendant network effects form a wide moat.
(disclaimer - I work on Positron)
notpushkin
CodeMirror is amazing these days, super lightweight compared to Monaco, and pretty extensible: https://codemirror.net/
(But that’s just the editor component, if you need all the other IDE stuff you’ll have to build it :-)
For something non-browser, I’m currently using Zed and it’s pretty good: https://zed.dev/
pks016
I'm a daily user of R with R studio (academia) and also use Python in VS code. Tried posit a couple of months ago, but it wasn't stable as daily driver. Not all packages were there. Might have to try again soon.
I have different specific habits for R and Python. Think it'll take a bit of time for people like me to switch. For a week, I also tried R in VS code, but something wasn't feeling right. I excited for the connections-pane if it works smoothly
aleph_minus_one
Positron is also the name of an ultra-portable 3D printer
that actually defined its whole new class of ultra-portable 3D printers (Positron-style 3D printers; their drive system is named "Positron drive").
A sibling of the Positron is the JourneyMaker:
> https://github.com/mcfazio2001/JourneyMaker-Positron
A cost-reduced (no CNC-machined parts) variant of the JourneyMaker with a unibody chassis that you can 3D-print by yourself is the Lemontron:
georgeg
This tool and ecosystem does not support Julia. I would expect that at this stage a data science polyglot tool is not just R and Python. Not sure why they would not support Julia.
juliasilge
I work on Positron and we are tracking interest in that here, if you would like to add a thumbs up or additional info: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron/issues/3679
dist-epoch
Julia never got traction, and now it's on decline.
7thaccount
This looks exactly like the Spyder IDE that comes with Anaconda and WinPython. You get. Code editor, repl, variable inspector, and inline charts. Everything you need.
juliasilge
I work on Positron, and I would say that Spyder can be a great choice for someone doing data science who uses Python only. I would argue that Positron is a better choice for people who use more than one language during their regular work (Python + C, Python + Rust, Python + JavaScript, etc) or who want a more customizable, extensible IDE.
7thaccount
Thank you for the extra context. Best of luck on your project. I might check it out if I ever need something like Spyder with a different language.
angelgonzales
I use Spyder daily for data analysis, plotting and preparing presentations. Does Positron have any improvements over Spyder? I’m not a “programmer” at all and love to use basic IDEs to analyze telemetry generated from testing.
juliasilge
I work on Positron and I'll chime in! If you only use Python (not any other languages) and you are happy with Spyder, then Positron might not be compelling as something for you to switch to. If you ever find yourself using additional programming languages for your work or you want a more customizable, extensible IDE, then you might consider taking a look at it; I don't expect it would be an onerous switch coming from Spyder.
Kind of unfortunate that it uses pyright and jedi instead of just basedpyright for the more advanced features. Python language support just isn't great with jedi compared to pylance or basedpyright.
And not to beat a dead horse, but I'm also not a huge fan of the broad claims around it being OSS when it very clearly has some strict limitations.
I've already had to migrate from R Connect Server / Posit Server at work, because of the extreme pricing for doing simple things like having auth enabled on internal apps.
We found a great alternative that's much better anyways, plus made our security folks a lot happier, but it was still a massive pain and frustrated users. I've avoided any commercial products from Posit since then and this one makes me hesitant especially with these blurry lines.