Why FastExcel Is the Next‑Gen High‑Performance Excel Library for Java Developers

Background of FastExcel

In 2023 the original author left Alibaba, and Alibaba stopped updating EasyExcel. The author decided to continue the project, initially naming it EasyExcel‑Plus, later renaming it FastExcel to emphasize both ease of use and high performance for large‑scale Excel files.

Key Features

Full compatibility with EasyExcel

FastExcel can replace EasyExcel without code changes. Migration only requires changing the Maven coordinates and package imports.

<dependency>
    <groupId>cn.idev.excel</groupId>
    <artifactId>fastexcel</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Import statements are also swapped, e.g., replace import com.alibaba.excel. with import cn.idev.excel.. The library can coexist with EasyExcel if needed, but full migration is recommended to leverage new features.

High performance

FastExcel optimizes low‑level algorithms and memory management, allowing processing of hundreds of thousands to millions of rows with far lower memory consumption and faster execution compared with traditional libraries such as Apache POI.

MIT open‑source license

The project is released under the MIT license, granting unrestricted commercial use and modification rights.

Innovative functions

Read a specified range of rows, enabling selective data extraction for large files.

Convert Excel to PDF while preserving layout, fonts, and formatting.

Future roadmap

Planned enhancements include support for more exotic Excel formats, further memory‑usage optimizations, richer APIs for fine‑grained filtering, sorting, grouping, chart generation, and tighter integration with enterprise systems.

From FastExcel to Chat2DB

After leaving Alibaba, the author launched the AI‑driven database management tool Chat2DB. It provides a web UI for creating, editing, and deleting tables, views, stored procedures, functions, and more, targeting both enterprise‑level and individual developers.

Chat2DB’s AI features include natural‑language‑to‑SQL conversion, SQL explanation in plain language, and cross‑dialect SQL translation (e.g., MySQL ↔ PostgreSQL ↔ Oracle).

Open‑source community

Both FastExcel and Chat2DB rely on community contributions via GitHub issues and pull requests. The projects are hosted on GitHub under MIT licenses, encouraging developers to submit bugs, feature requests, and code improvements.

GitHub repositories:

FastExcel: https://github.com/CodePhiliaX/fastexcel

Chat2DB: https://github.com/CodePhiliaX/Chat2DB