OR-Tools vs Hexaly
Explore the performance of Hexaly and OR-Tools on problems like Routing, Scheduling, Sequencing, Packing, Clustering, Assignment, and more. The two solvers are compared to the state of the art on key performance metrics like speed and scalability.
Hexaly VS OR-Tools
Check our benchmarks against OR-Tools
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Q&A
What is the difference between Hexaly and OR-Tools?
OR-Tools is a collection of several mathematical optimization solvers. The two main solvers in OR-Tools are: the Vehicle Routing (VRP) solver and the Constraint Programming (CP-SAT) solver. These solvers are limited to combinatorial problems only since they didn’t support continuous variables.
Hexaly Optimizer is a new kind of global optimization solver. Based on nonlinear and set modeling constructs, Hexaly leverages algorithmic techniques from the research than traditional solvers cannot leverage out of the box, like Column Generation and Local Search.
Is the Hexaly suite of products similar to OR-Tools?
OR-Tools is a collection of several mathematical optimization solvers.
Hexaly’s core product is Hexaly Optimizer. Because solving is not the only challenge faced by developers, Hexaly offers a complete platform to prototype, develop, and deploy optimization apps in the cloud in weeks, not months: Hexaly Studio, Modeler, and Cloud.
Do I have to avoid or approximate continuous variables and expressions when modeling with Hexaly, as I do with OR-Tools?
Hexaly’s modeling formalism is very general, nonlinear and set-oriented. Hexaly supports discrete and continuous variables and expressions. You model your business problems using common mathematical operators like Min, Max, And, Or, If-Then-Else. You can write polynomial, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric expressions.
Hexaly supports Black-Box Optimization: you can define your own math operator as a piece of code; this way you can easily mix Simulation or Machine Learning with Mathematical Optimization.
For discrete problems, you can use Set, List, Interval variables and related algebraic operators to model compactly, on the contrary to the traditional Boolean or integer modeling approach.
Also, Hexaly natively supports lexicographic-ordered multiobjective optimization.
Does Hexaly outperform OR-Tools on all types of optimization problems?
We don’t claim Hexaly outperforms OR-Tools on all problems. We have chosen problems related to Supply Chain and Workforce Management that are of interest to enterprises and for which solid scientific literature and results can be found publicly. Benchmarking requires a lot of time to be done seriously. This is a work in progress; new benchmarks will be published in the coming months related to different business domains.
Are my OR-Tools models compatible with Hexaly?
Hexaly is more than a traditional Constraint Programming (CP) solver. This is a kind of hybrid between Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP), Non-Linear Programming (NLP), and Constraint Programming (CP). Its richer, higher-level modeling interface is nonlinear and set-oriented. To benefit from the speed and scalability gains exposed in the benchmark above, you must remodel your problem by following Hexaly’s best modeling practices. This is easy: you can find many Hexaly modeling examples online and our team will be happy to help if you have any questions.
As a result, Hexaly is not compatible with traditional MILP, NLP, and CP solvers. We recognize this is a significant drawback, but changing the traditional modeling interfaces was the only way to build a much better solver. Nevertheless, Hexaly offers very friendly and intuitive Python, Java, C#, and C++ modeling APIs compatible with any hardware, operating system, and cloud environment.
How does Hexaly’s technical support compare to OR-Tools?
OR-Tools comes with no professional support. At Hexaly, the support is done by the people who develop Hexaly Optimizer. In addition to mastering the solver technicalities, Hexaly’s developers regularly have to solve industrial optimization problems in business contexts. As a result, they know very well how to model and solve business problems to make business users happy. They will guide you in the Hexaly documentation, answer your questions, and review your Hexaly model so to ensure it matches Hexaly best modeling practices and delivers the best performance.
Is Hexaly’s free like OR-Tools?
Hexaly is not free like OR-Tools. Hexaly is an independent company and must pay the talented 40 people working every day to make the solver better. Hexaly is on a mission to democratize mathematical optimization, as a scientific discipline and technology, so any organization can optimize its operations and anyone can do more with less. Therfore, contrarily to any other solver vendor, Hexaly offers a Unlimited license for a flat annual or quarterly price. Moreover, our prices are discounted for startups and SMEs and we offer all Hexaly products free of charge to students and academics. Check our pricing page for more details and contact us to answer any specific questions.
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Testimonials
Are you seeking a powerful optimization solver to handle complex problems like VRP, TSP, scheduling, and packing? Look no further than Hexaly Optimizer! I've been using it daily, and it's been an absolute blast. Not only is it lightning-fast and user-friendly, but it's also incredibly flexible and adaptable to your needs. With its intuitive studio, you can easily design use cases with less than 20 lines of code. So if you're looking for the fastest and most efficient optimization solver on the market, I highly recommend Hexaly. Try it out and see the results for yourself!
Creating a bridge between Model-Based Systems Engineering techniques and Operations research required an optimization solver combining accessibility and performance. Hexaly Optimizer was a great choice in this context: thanks to its natural mathematical formalism and fast transparent algorithms it is a strong support for the elaboration of optimized system architectures against multi-perspective constraints. I warmly thank the Hexaly team for its precious help regarding the constraints implementation.
I have worked with Hexaly Optimizer to solve several large-scale optimization projects in highly dynamic environments, where Hexaly Optimizer has proven instrumental in finding high-quality solutions within minutes to satisfy the needs for dynamic re-planning. I have found that the unique expressiveness of Hexaly’s modeling API and the highly knowledgeable support team makes Hexaly my go-to choice for complex optimization problems.
The innovative features of Hexaly Optimizer and its unique modeling formalism have allowed us to solve numerous problems for which we could not find satisfying solutions with MIP solvers. Hexaly Optimizer’s performance greatly surpasses our expectations on the TSP, matching, and facility location problems we’re working on. In one year, we have optimized € 160 million with an average gain of 12%. Nikolas's reactive and precise support has greatly helped us move forward quickly on our projects.
We developed the Pasco supply chain optimization model using Hexaly Optimizer within a few days of work. Hexaly Optimizer provides outstanding solutions, as considered by Pasco planners, in just a few minutes of running times, while the number of variables is gigantic (tens of millions). We could not imagine such a feat being possible initially since state-of-the-art MIP solvers like CPLEX, Xpress, and Gurobi could not tackle the problem in hours. Now we know that using Hexaly, it's possible!
Preparing Fret SNCF train drivers’ schedules is a complex task involving many operational and regulatory constraints. To solve this highly combinatorial problem, we sought a solver capable of handling this complexity and providing high-quality solutions in short running times. Hexaly Optimizer was the best solver on the market for this task. It now allows us to compute new optimized plans every year and to adapt these schedules regularly to meet new requirements.
Solving this very rich routing problem required an optimization method that can handle many different constraints: being able to do that with a high-level declarative language like Hexaly Modeler made this task much easier. Hexaly Optimizer’s very quick modeling and solving times allowed us to run what-if analysis to inform potential fleet management decisions. Being able to solve the problem very quickly also enabled us to handle the stochastic nature of the problem with ease, running hundreds of scenarios in just a few minutes.
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