Changes in CRAN submissions in the age of LLMs

A brief look at data on CRAN submissions over time.

This is more data on CRAN submissions in 2026, to support and follow-up on the DDSS blog.

New package submissions are taking off in 2026:

Figure 1

Monthly package submissions, including updates, are up:

Figure 2

Increases are relatively consistent across weeks:

Figure 3

All package submissions are trending up in 2026:

Figure 4

New package submissions are way above expectations:

Figure 5

CRAN submissions from new authors have stayed relatively stable over time, with perhaps a dip in recent years:

Figure 6

There’s a big increase in solo-authored new packages in 2026:

Figure 7

If the trend continues, single authored packages in 2026 would nearly double that of 2025:

Figure 8

This is being driven by solo developers who have previously published packages on CRAN:

Figure 9

If the trends continue, experienced developers would nearly hit the same number of packages as multi-author teams:

Figure 10

There’s been a small increase in the number of dependencies over time, especially from none to 1 or 2:

Figure 11

Yet, data suggests packages are both becoming simpler and better documented, using some basic proxies:

Figure 12

Packages are also including more suggested packages:

Figure 13

Over the longer period of CRAN, we can see a change in contributions towards the tidyverse and Rcpp by looking at maintainers:

Figure 14

Looking at authors, instead of just maintainers, highlights the RStudio/Posit contribution in the growing ecosystem:

Figure 15