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Comparison · Infra & APIs
cofad vs xpose4
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cofad and xpose4 — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:maintenance
cofad vs xpose4: at a glance
What is cofad?
Contrast analysis with a Shiny front end, shipping about one release a year
cofad performs contrast analyses for factorial designs in both between- and within-subject forms, and ships a Shiny GUI alongside the R interface. The 0.3.0 release in 2024 was the substantial one: a helper for calculating differences between two sets of lambdas for competing contrast analysis, improved summary output, removal of the plyr dependency, a rebuilt Shiny interface using standard elements after the sortable drag-and-drop proved unstable, and a change of maintainer to Johannes Titz. The most recent release is a one-line patch fixing degrees of freedom in the t-test table.
What is xpose4?
NONMEM's veteran diagnostics package, now moving at about one fix a year
xpose4 generates diagnostic plots for nonlinear mixed-effect models fitted in NONMEM, a role it has held since 2014 when five packages were consolidated into one. The three most recent releases are a documentation cross-reference update, a change of the default table-reading method to the slower and more reliable one, and a set of file-parsing bug fixes. No new plot types appear anywhere in the window.
cofad vs xpose4: editorial side-by-side
cofad
0.0INFRA · APIS
Contrast analysis with a Shiny front end, shipping about one release a year
◆ Current state
cofad performs contrast analyses for factorial designs in both between- and within-subject forms, and ships a Shiny GUI alongside the R interface. The 0.3.0 release in 2024 was the substantial one: a helper for calculating differences between two sets of lambdas for competing contrast analysis, improved summary output, removal of the plyr dependency, a rebuilt Shiny interface using standard elements after the sortable drag-and-drop proved unstable, and a change of maintainer to Johannes Titz. The most recent release is a one-line patch fixing degrees of freedom in the t-test table.
◆ Where it's heading
Development is slow and correctness-led. The record runs from a JOSS publication in 2021 through a near three-year gap to a release that both extended the method and repaired the GUI, then a degrees-of-freedom fix. Maintainer and author order changed in 0.3.0, which typically marks a handover rather than a burst of new work, and the cadence since is consistent with that.
◆ Prediction
Expect low-frequency correctness releases; the competing contrast analysis helper added in 0.3.0 is the most likely thing to be extended if anything is.
xpose4
0.0INFRA · APIS
NONMEM's veteran diagnostics package, now moving at about one fix a year
◆ Current state
xpose4 generates diagnostic plots for nonlinear mixed-effect models fitted in NONMEM, a role it has held since 2014 when five packages were consolidated into one. The three most recent releases are a documentation cross-reference update, a change of the default table-reading method to the slower and more reliable one, and a set of file-parsing bug fixes. No new plot types appear anywhere in the window.
◆ Where it's heading
Development now responds to the R ecosystem rather than to pharmacometrics: deprecated dplyr and tibble calls, readr and gam changes, and R documentation standards account for most recent entries. The last release with visible new capability is 4.6.0 in 2017, which extended xpose.VPC() with outlier identification, median-positioned lines and bin rugs. The feed's older tags are also unreliable — versions 4.5.0 through 4.5.3 all carry the same 2014 timestamp, so their order says nothing about sequence.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued compatibility maintenance at roughly one release a year, triggered by changes in R or in the packages it reads tables with; nothing in these entries points to new diagnostic capability being planned.
Alternatives to cofad and xpose4
Other Infra & APIs 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 cofad or xpose4.
Cursor
Cursor's agents stop waiting to be asked - they subscribe, and they hold a goal until it's done.
incident.io
Nexus does the diagnosis; the agent is now reaching into the status page too.
Warp
Warp turned its quarter of software-factory essays into infrastructure you can buy.
Okta
Okta's developer blog is a Cross App Access campaign, now diluted by advocacy-team storytelling.
tealeaves
A leaf-temperature model that finished its job in 2020 and has stayed finished
See all cofad alternatives → · See all xpose4 alternatives →
Recent activity from cofad and xpose4
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11mo agoxpose4Documentation cross-references updated to R standards
- 1y agocofadDegrees of freedom corrected in the t-test table
- 2y agocofadCompeting contrast helper, rebuilt Shiny GUI, maintainer change
- 4y agoxpose4Default table reading switched to the 'slow' method
- 4y agocofadDocumentation and references for JOSS publication
- 4y agocofadShiny GUI added; aggregated-data function and 0-variance fix
- 5y agoxpose4Fixes for -99 row filtering, catab/cotab covariates and CSV import
- 6y agoxpose4Adjustable censored-line length in kaplan.plot()
- 8y agoxpose4Compliance updates for readr and gam changes
- 9y agoxpose4VPC outlier identification, median lines and bin rugs
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cofad and xpose4?
Both compete on the same themes — maintenance — within Infra & APIs. cofad and xpose4 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 cofad better than xpose4?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cofad and xpose4 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to cofad?
Top cofad alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cofad alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cofad for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to xpose4?
Top xpose4 alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "xpose4 alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/xpose4 for the full list with editorial commentary on each.