easystats
The easystats meta-package is install tooling wrapped around a relicensed ecosystem.
Comparison · Analytics
butcher vs yardstick
A side-by-side editorial comparison of butcher and yardstick — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:tidymodels
butcher vs yardstick: at a glance
What is butcher?
butcher expands from trimming models to trimming whole tidymodels workflows
butcher strips the parts of fitted R model objects that bloat serialized size without being needed for prediction, and it grows one method family at a time. The 0.3.x line piled up coverage for MASS, klaR, mixOmics, ipred, survival and xgboost objects; 0.4.0 changes the target from individual models to resampling and tuning containers, and hands maintenance to Max Kuhn.
What is yardstick?
yardstick made fairness metrics a first-class part of tidymodels evaluation
yardstick supplies the metrics tidymodels evaluates models with. Its recent history is metric expansion into areas the package did not originally cover - survival analysis, model fairness, and in 1.4.0 a batch of regression and classification metrics filling remaining gaps - alongside a long deprecation cycle that finally turned errors on in 1.4.0.
butcher vs yardstick: editorial side-by-side
butcher
0.0ANALYTICS
butcher expands from trimming models to trimming whole tidymodels workflows
◆ Current state
butcher strips the parts of fitted R model objects that bloat serialized size without being needed for prediction, and it grows one method family at a time. The 0.3.x line piled up coverage for MASS, klaR, mixOmics, ipred, survival and xgboost objects; 0.4.0 changes the target from individual models to resampling and tuning containers, and hands maintenance to Max Kuhn.
◆ Where it's heading
Coverage is following where tidymodels users actually accumulate size — rset, rsplit, tune_results and workflow_set objects are the things that get large in a tuning run, not single fits. The maintainer handoff points the package further into the tidymodels orbit rather than the broad model zoo it started as. Releases are otherwise small and fix-driven.
◆ Prediction
Expect further methods for tidymodels container classes and continued upkeep against xgboost and torch-backed engines; the entries show no move toward automatic size reporting or a different API.
yardstick
0.0ANALYTICS
yardstick made fairness metrics a first-class part of tidymodels evaluation
◆ Current state
yardstick supplies the metrics tidymodels evaluates models with. Its recent history is metric expansion into areas the package did not originally cover - survival analysis, model fairness, and in 1.4.0 a batch of regression and classification metrics filling remaining gaps - alongside a long deprecation cycle that finally turned errors on in 1.4.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is coverage plus extensibility. Rather than adding fairness metrics one at a time, 1.3.0 shipped new_groupwise_metric() so group-aware metrics can be defined for the problem at hand, which is the more durable contribution. The parallel thread is removing hidden state: the event_first global option, deprecated in 0.0.7, took until 1.4.0 to become an error.
◆ Prediction
Expect the groupwise constructor to attract more fairness definitions than the three shipped, and the developer-facing metric creation helpers deprecated in 1.2.0 to be removed next; core metric coverage now looks close to complete.
Alternatives to butcher and yardstick
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either butcher or yardstick.
discrim
discrim settled into a thin engine shim after handing its model definitions to parsnip.
dbparser
dbparser shed its database and CSV writers to become just a DrugBank parser.
desirability2
desirability2 is making multi-metric model selection a first-class tidymodels step.
crosstalk
crosstalk is frozen infrastructure: four releases in five years, mostly CRAN upkeep.
cmdstanr
cmdstanr keeps adding fast approximations beside full HMC, and fighting Windows toolchains.
See all butcher alternatives → · See all yardstick alternatives →
Recent activity from butcher and yardstick
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agoyardstickAdds Gini, MSE and rate metrics; old deprecations now error
- 8mo agobutcherMethods for rset, tune_results and workflow_set; new maintainer
- 11mo agobutcherkknn methods no longer remove the call
- 1y agobutcherComponent existence check fixed; nestedmodels methods removed
- 1y agoyardstickAll messages translated to cli
- 2y agobutcherbutcher 0.3.4
- 2y agoyardstickFixes wrong weights in roc_curve_survival()
- 2y agoyardstickFairness metrics and a groupwise metric constructor ⚡
- 2y agobutcherMethods for nestedmodels and mgcv::gam; clearer butchering messages
- 3y agoyardstickBrier score for classification; tidyselect interface throughout
- 3y agobutcherEight new model families gain butcher methods
- 3y agoyardstickNew maintainer; clearer metric_set() errors
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between butcher and yardstick?
Both compete on the same themes — tidymodels — within Analytics. butcher and yardstick are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is butcher better than yardstick?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. butcher and yardstick are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to butcher?
Top butcher alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "butcher alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/butcher for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to yardstick?
Top yardstick alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "yardstick alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/yardstick for the full list with editorial commentary on each.