tidytext
Finished, widely taught, and shipping roxygen fixes.
Comparison · Analytics
feasts vs lime
A side-by-side editorial comparison of feasts and lime — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-stats
feasts vs lime: at a glance
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.
What is lime?
lime survives on compatibility patches years after its research moment
lime brings local interpretable model-agnostic explanations to R. Its substantive development finished around 0.5.0 in 2019, which added argument pass-through to predict(), a gower_pow tuning knob and a batch of fixes. Since then there have been three releases: a namespace fix, a maintainer handover to Emil Hvitfeldt with general upkeep, and a patch to work across xgboost versions.
feasts vs lime: editorial side-by-side
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.
lime
0.0ANALYTICS
lime survives on compatibility patches years after its research moment
◆ Current state
lime brings local interpretable model-agnostic explanations to R. Its substantive development finished around 0.5.0 in 2019, which added argument pass-through to predict(), a gower_pow tuning knob and a batch of fixes. Since then there have been three releases: a namespace fix, a maintainer handover to Emil Hvitfeldt with general upkeep, and a patch to work across xgboost versions.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is in custodial maintenance — kept installable and compatible with the model packages it explains, rather than developed. The 2022 handover is the most consequential entry in the window because it determined that the package would keep getting patches at all.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to be another compatibility fix triggered by an upstream model package, not new explanation methods.
Alternatives to feasts and lime
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 feasts or lime.
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.
Recent activity from feasts and lime
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agofeastsfeasts moves its plots to ggtime behind a 2-year deprecation ⚡
- 8mo agolimeCompatibility across all xgboost versions
- 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
- 3y agofeastsCRAN patch for S3 method consistency
- 3y agolimeMaintainer handover to Emil Hvitfeldt
- 5y agolimeorder() fix and lighter dependencies
- 6y agolimeNamespace fix following glmnet changes
- 7y agolimeexplain() gains pass-through args and gower_pow tuning
- 8y agolimeh2o support, NA handling and date feature types
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between feasts and lime?
Both compete on the same themes — r-stats — within Analytics. feasts and lime 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 feasts better than lime?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. feasts and lime 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 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.
What are the best alternatives to lime?
Top lime alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "lime alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/lime-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.