tidytext
Finished, widely taught, and shipping roxygen fixes.
Comparison · Analytics
comtradr vs feasts
A side-by-side editorial comparison of comtradr and feasts — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
comtradr vs feasts: at a glance
What is comtradr?
comtradr's 1.0 line is a long tail of patches against a brittle UN trade API.
comtradr wraps the UN Comtrade API for international trade data in R, handling authentication, reference tables, caching and bulk downloads. The entire visible window is the 1.0 patch series: six releases, most of them repairs. The substantive additions are a variable-metadata reference table and automatic request splitting.
What is feasts?
feasts is splitting itself in two, moving every plot into ggtime
feasts provides feature extraction and statistics for tsibble time series. The last two releases are dominated by one decision: all of its gg_*() plotting functions are being moved out into a separate ggtime package. 0.4.2 announced the deprecation and 0.5.0 makes ggtime a dependency with soft-deprecation messages on every re-export.
comtradr vs feasts: editorial side-by-side
comtradr
2.5ANALYTICS
comtradr's 1.0 line is a long tail of patches against a brittle UN trade API.
◆ Current state
comtradr wraps the UN Comtrade API for international trade data in R, handling authentication, reference tables, caching and bulk downloads. The entire visible window is the 1.0 patch series: six releases, most of them repairs. The substantive additions are a variable-metadata reference table and automatic request splitting.
◆ Where it's heading
The work is defensive, shaped by the API's constraints rather than by a roadmap. The 1.0.6 fix is representative: Comtrade rejects URLs longer than about 2000 characters, so the package now detects that before the request and transparently splits and recombines it. Running alongside is steady dependency hygiene, most recently swapping poorman for dplyr ahead of a CRAN archival.
◆ Prediction
The release pattern points to more of the same, with error-message and edge-case repairs as users hit new API limits, rather than new endpoints.
feasts
0.0ANALYTICS
feasts is splitting itself in two, moving every plot into ggtime
◆ Current state
feasts provides feature extraction and statistics for tsibble time series. The last two releases are dominated by one decision: all of its gg_*() plotting functions are being moved out into a separate ggtime package. 0.4.2 announced the deprecation and 0.5.0 makes ggtime a dependency with soft-deprecation messages on every re-export.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is narrowing to its stated purpose — features and statistics — and shedding graphics entirely over a deliberately slow two-year window. Everything else in the recent history is ggplot2 compatibility work and narrow seasonal-plot bug fixes, which is consistent with a maintainer trimming surface area rather than growing it.
◆ Prediction
The next releases should be compatibility upkeep while the ggtime deprecation runs its course; the re-exports stay until the announced window closes.
Alternatives to comtradr and feasts
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 comtradr or feasts.
textrecipes
Text features finally stay sparse all the way to the model.
probably
The package that made calibration a step instead of an afterthought.
workflowsets
workflowsets keeps widening what counts as a model worth comparing.
workflows
The tidymodels pipeline grew a third stage, and it happens after the model runs.
vetiver
Posit's MLOps package went quiet for two years, then came back to keep up with recipes.
See all comtradr alternatives → · See all feasts alternatives →
Recent activity from comtradr and feasts
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 13d agocomtradrLong code lists split automatically to avoid HTTP 414 errors
- 6mo agofeastsfeasts moves its plots to ggtime behind a 2-year deprecation ⚡
- 8mo agocomtradravailable_variables reference table exposes API metadata
- 10mo agocomtradrISO alpha-2 codes added to reference tables
- 11mo agofeastsggplot2 4.0.0 compatibility and the ggtime deprecation notice
- 1y agocomtradrPatch restores tidy_cols after a regression
- 1y agofeastsgg_season() fix for sub-weekly daily data
- 1y agocomtradrFixes for tidy_cols argument and bulk small-file downloads
- 1y agofeastsImpulse-response plots and Johansen cointegration tests
- 2y agocomtradrCache relocated to comply with CRAN policy
- 2y agofeastsPatch for ggplot2 3.5.0 breaking changes
- 3y agofeastsCRAN patch for S3 method consistency
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between comtradr and feasts?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. comtradr is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is comtradr better than feasts?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. comtradr is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to comtradr?
Top comtradr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "comtradr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/comtradr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to feasts?
Top feasts alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "feasts alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/feasts for the full list with editorial commentary on each.