mlr3mbo
mlr3mbo picked its defaults from a benchmark study, not from taste
Comparison · Analytics
crosstalk vs feasts
A side-by-side editorial comparison of crosstalk and feasts — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
crosstalk vs feasts: at a glance
What is crosstalk?
crosstalk is frozen infrastructure: four releases in five years, mostly CRAN upkeep.
crosstalk provides the shared-selection and filtering layer that lets independent htmlwidgets communicate on a page without Shiny. Its visible history is four releases across five years, one of which made a substantive change and three of which were fixes. The most recent exists only to clear an R CMD check NOTE.
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.
crosstalk vs feasts: editorial side-by-side
crosstalk
0.0ANALYTICS
crosstalk is frozen infrastructure: four releases in five years, mostly CRAN upkeep.
◆ Current state
crosstalk provides the shared-selection and filtering layer that lets independent htmlwidgets communicate on a page without Shiny. Its visible history is four releases across five years, one of which made a substantive change and three of which were fixes. The most recent exists only to clear an R CMD check NOTE.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is finished in the sense that matters: it does one thing, widget authors depend on it, and it changes when R or CRAN forces it to. The single directional move here is 1.2.0 dropping the bundled Bootstrap dependency so crosstalk stops imposing a CSS framework on the pages that embed it. Nothing since suggests further design work.
◆ Prediction
The next release is most likely another CRAN-compliance fix; the entries show no feature work in progress.
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 crosstalk 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 crosstalk or feasts.
loo
loo keeps rewriting the diagnostics Bayesian modellers read off model comparison
mlr3fselect
mlr3fselect turned feature selection into an asynchronous, distributable job
lime
lime survives on compatibility patches years after its research moment
mlr3measures
mlr3measures is systematically retrofitting sample weights across every metric
mlr3cluster
mlr3cluster went from a handful of clusterers to covering the field
See all crosstalk alternatives → · See all feasts alternatives →
Recent activity from crosstalk and feasts
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agofeastsfeasts moves its plots to ggtime behind a 2-year deprecation ⚡
- 11mo agocrosstalkRd link anchors fixed for R CMD check
- 11mo agofeastsggplot2 4.0.0 compatibility and the ggtime deprecation notice
- 1y agofeastsgg_season() fix for sub-weekly daily data
- 1y agofeastsImpulse-response plots and Johansen cointegration tests
- 2y agofeastsPatch for ggplot2 3.5.0 breaking changes
- 2y agocrosstalkFixes for SharedData in Shiny modules and filter escaping
- 3y agofeastsCRAN patch for S3 method consistency
- 4y agocrosstalkBootstrap dependency dropped from filter and layout helpers
- 6y agocrosstalkClearer error when Shiny is not installed
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between crosstalk and feasts?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. crosstalk and feasts 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 crosstalk better than feasts?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. crosstalk and feasts 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 crosstalk?
Top crosstalk alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "crosstalk alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/crosstalk 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.