We are excited to introduce Positron, a free, next-generation Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for data science by Posit PBC. Positron brings the spectrum of exploration and production work together in one environment so you can move from ideation to insight to application without switching context. Ultimately, we have taken all the learnings from the 14+ years of building RStudio, and applied them to a new platform that treats Python and R as equals.
It is a great time to start using Positron, as we’ve now released our second Positron desktop stable release as of 2025.08.0 after 2+ years of development. The upcoming release of Posit Workbench will also introduce Positron sessions as a generally available IDE type.
If you are wondering about RStudio, please don’t worry – it’s not going away! RStudio includes 14+ years of R focused optimizations and we are committed to maintaining and updating RStudio. For more information, please read the FAQ for RStudio users.
Why Positron and why now?
When RStudio, PBC became Posit, PBC in 2022, we committed to supporting multi‑language, open‑source data science. This has included introducing Quarto, Shiny for Python in addition to R, and broad support for both Python and R in our open-source packages and Posit Team suite of professional tools. Today, data teams work in both R and Python, often within the same group and sometimes even within the same project.
Positron is designed for that world, and ultimately, our goal for Positron is to create an IDE for data science that supports the full scope of modern scientific and data-driven work, across languages, tools, and workflows. We aim to do this by:
Providing a cohesive and thoughtful experience for writing code, performing analyses, and exploring data. Whether you’re working in Python, R, or both, Positron combines notebooks, scripts, and consoles with native support for plotting and data output. Positron is also built to support additional languages, such as SQL, in the future.
Supporting the kinds of workflows that are central to data science. This includes iterative development, rich interactive output, and publication-quality documents. Positron provides built-in support for notebooks, Quarto, data apps, and more, enabling a range of common authoring and analysis tasks.
Offering a modern, extensible editor built on open standards. Positron is built on Code OSS, the same foundation as Visual Studio Code, with custom features and UI elements designed specifically for data science. This includes support for a wide array of VSIX extensions and customization, while also enabling deeper integration of language-specific tools.
We believe that powerful, user-friendly, and open tools are essential for scientific computing. Positron is freely available, aligning with our goal to make high-quality data science tools accessible to everyone.
... continue reading