Vehicle Routing Problem Solver Built on 'PyVRP'

A 'tidyverse'-style interface to high-performance vehicle routing problem (VRP) solving. Vendors the C++ core of the 'PyVRP' solver (< https://github.com/PyVRP/PyVRP>) and rewires it through 'cpp11', with no 'Python' runtime dependency. Supports the capacitated VRP, time windows, multiple depots, heterogeneous fleets, prize-collecting and multi-trip variants, driven by an iterated local search metaheuristic.

vrpr

A production-grade vehicle routing problem (VRP) solver for R.

vrpr brings the state-of-the-art PyVRP solver to R. It vendors PyVRP's high-performance C++ core and rewires it with cpp11, wrapped in an idiomatic, tidyverse-style API: a pipe-friendly model builder, data in tibbles, and logging via cli — with no Python runtime dependency.

It fills a real gap in the R ecosystem: there are ompr, ROI, lpSolve, igraph and dodgr, but no modern, strong, friendly solver for production vehicle routing.

Highlights

• All the classic VRP variants, from one tidy interface: capacitated VRP, time windows (VRPTW), heterogeneous fleets, multiple depots (MDVRP), prize-collecting with optional clients and mutually exclusive groups, simultaneous pickup & delivery / backhaul, paired pickup-and-delivery shipments (PDP/PDPTW), and multi-trip routes.
• Fast — the search runs entirely in PyVRP's C++ core (iterated local search with late-acceptance hill-climbing). No Python required.
• Verified parity with PyVRP — identical objective, and on the X-n101-k25 benchmark (optimum 27591) both reach the optimum in 20 s (see tools/benchmark/).
• Reads standard instances (VRPLIB / TSPLIB and Solomon) and plots solutions with ggplot2.

Installation

Install the released version from CRAN:

install.packages("vrpr")

Or the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("StrategicProjects/vrpr")

A C++20 toolchain is required to build from source (R >= 4.3).

Quick start

library(vrpr)

clients <- tibble::tibble(
  x = c(10, 25, 40, 15), y = c(5, 30, 12, 22),
  demand = c(10, 15, 8, 12)
)

res <- vrp_model() |>
  add_depot(x = 0, y = 0) |>
  add_clients(clients) |>
  add_vehicle_type(num_available = 3, capacity = 50) |>
  vrp_solve(stop = max_runtime(2))

cost(res)      # objective cost
routes(res)    # tibble: route_id, depot, position, client, vehicle_type, ...
summary(res)   # one-row summary
plot(res)      # the routes, with {ggplot2}

Variants

See the Getting started guide and the Articles for worked examples of each.

Reading standard instances

m <- read_vrplib(system.file("extdata", "sample-n6-k2.vrp", package = "vrpr"))
m <- read_solomon(system.file("extdata", "sample-solomon.txt", package = "vrpr"))
res <- m |> vrp_solve(stop = max_runtime(5))

How it works

vrpr is a thin, idiomatic R skin over PyVRP's C++ engine:

1. Tidy R API — you build a model from tibbles and call vrp_solve().
2. R orchestration — the iterated local search loop, penalty manager and stopping criteria, a faithful port of PyVRP's IteratedLocalSearch.
3. cpp11 binding — long-lived C++ objects travel as external pointers; data crosses as tibbles and matrices, with integer-measure validation at the boundary.
4. Vendored PyVRP C++ core (src/vendor/pyvrp/, version pinned in tools/PYVRP_VERSION) — the hot compute: problem data, cost evaluation, solutions and the local-search operators.

The light R loop drives the heavy C++ search, so you get PyVRP-grade performance with a pure-R, Python-free workflow.

License

MIT. Derived from PyVRP (© PyVRP contributors, Thibaut Vidal, ORTEC), whose copyright is preserved; see inst/COPYRIGHTS.