deprecated
SparkR
SparkR is deprecated, replaced by sparklyr (deprecated November 2024).
The Apache Spark R API that shipped in every Databricks Runtime, giving R notebooks a distributed data frame with selection, filtering, and aggregation over large datasets.
- Databricks deprecated it before Apache did - the Runtime 16.0 notes say SparkR was deprecated in preparation for its deprecation in the upcoming Spark 4 release.
- It was partly a Databricks child all along: SparkR is built by the Spark community and developers from Databricks, which is why it mirrors the Scala classes and DataFrame API so closely.
- Deprecation did not stop the upgrades - Databricks Runtime 18.0 still bumped SparkR from 4.0.0 to 4.1.0, more than a year after the deprecation notice.
- Category
- Developer experience
- Also known as
- SparkR in Databricks, library(SparkR), SparkDataFrame
- Verified
- 2026-09-27
Sources
- Official Official Databricks / Microsoft docs
- Official Databricks docs: Migrate from SparkR to sparklyr
- Official Databricks docs: Comparing SparkR and sparklyr
- Official Databricks release notes: Databricks Runtime 16.0 GA (November 2024)
- Official Microsoft Learn: Azure Databricks for R developers (same SparkR deprecation notice)