No. 24 of 36 ·Data Transformation Tools

data.table

Windows · Mac · Linux

Freedom report

Three barsScore 5.5

Free tierA free tier is on its own pricing page
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely3 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

data.table is ranked #24 of 36 in data transformation tools on Freedom251. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. There is a free plan.

data.table plans and pricing

All plans

data.table Free R package; requires base R rdatatable.gitlab.io · 8 Oct 2026

Compared on data transformation tools

Free plan: Yes
Deployment model: self_hosted
Transformation interface: code
Supported data formats: CSV, TSV, delimited text, compressed .gz and .bz2 files

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The record

What it is: data.table is an R package that provides a high-performance version of base R’s data.frame.
Data operations: It supports filtering, grouping, aggregation, joins, reshaping, and adding, updating, or deleting columns.
File input: Its fread() function reads delimited files and can read directly from web URLs or shell commands.
File output: Its fwrite() function writes delimited files and is optimized for speed on large files.
Parallel processing: Many common operations are internally parallelized to use multiple CPU threads.
Memory use: The project describes data.table as memory efficient and says columns can be added, updated, or deleted by reference without copies.
Dependencies: The project says data.table has no external Imports, LinkingTo, or Depends dependencies.
Integrations: data.table is an R package and can use R functions from other packages in queries.
File format limit: Reading and writing binary files such as Parquet is listed as outside the project’s current scope.
Out-of-memory limit: Manipulating data stored on disk or in remote SQL databases is listed as outside the project’s current scope.
Supported systems: The installation guide lists Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Community support: The project directs users who need help to its active Stack Overflow community.
Funding: The data.table project is fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS and accepts donations to support project needs.
License: The project repository identifies its license as MPL-2.0.
Price from: Free

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Data Transformation Tools in 2026#24 of 36

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Sources

rdatatable.gitlab.io/data.table/· checked 8 Oct 2026
rdatatable.gitlab.io/data.table/GOVERNANCE.html· checked 8 Oct 2026
rdatatable.gitlab.io/data.table/articles/datatable-fread-and· checked 8 Oct 2026
github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/wiki/Installation· checked 8 Oct 2026
github.com/Rdatatable/data.table· checked 8 Oct 2026