rnaturalearth
rnaturalearth finished its sp exit and is now optimising how the data actually arrives.
Comparison · Analytics
forecast vs timetk
A side-by-side editorial comparison of forecast and timetk — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:time-series
forecast vs timetk: at a glance
What is forecast?
After years of pure maintenance, forecast 9.0.0 reopens the package
forecast is the long-established R forecasting package that fable was meant to succeed. For several years its releases were RNG fixes, base-R compatibility and documentation. Then 9.0.0 arrived with a batch of new model constructors, wider prediction-interval support and a rewritten accuracy() built on S3 methods.
What is timetk?
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
timetk handles time series wrangling, visualization, and feature engineering in a tidyverse idiom. Its defining recent move was absorbing the anomalize package outright in 2.9.0, bringing anomaly detection, cleaning, and the associated plots inside timetk rather than leaving them in a sibling package. Development then paused for nearly two years before 2.9.1, a robustness and documentation release.
forecast vs timetk: editorial side-by-side
forecast
0.0ANALYTICS
After years of pure maintenance, forecast 9.0.0 reopens the package
◆ Current state
forecast is the long-established R forecasting package that fable was meant to succeed. For several years its releases were RNG fixes, base-R compatibility and documentation. Then 9.0.0 arrived with a batch of new model constructors, wider prediction-interval support and a rewritten accuracy() built on S3 methods.
◆ Where it's heading
The major version reframes forecast around explicit *_model() constructors — mean, random walk, spline, theta, Croston — rather than the older function-per-method style, and the 9.0.x patches since have been performance and argument-handling cleanups on top. That is an active maintenance line, not a package winding down in favour of fable.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued 9.0.x patches consolidating the new constructors and their forecast methods, with the older interfaces kept working alongside them.
timetk
0.0ANALYTICS
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
◆ Current state
timetk handles time series wrangling, visualization, and feature engineering in a tidyverse idiom. Its defining recent move was absorbing the anomalize package outright in 2.9.0, bringing anomaly detection, cleaning, and the associated plots inside timetk rather than leaving them in a sibling package. Development then paused for nearly two years before 2.9.1, a robustness and documentation release.
◆ Where it's heading
The trajectory before the pause was consolidation: fold in adjacent functionality, then make the visualization layer handle many series at once via trelliscopejs, then broaden feature generation with tk_tsfeatures(). The recent release works on the least glamorous layer — internal generics so date parsing and sequence generation behave consistently across Date, POSIXct, hms, yearmon, and yearqtr — which is the kind of foundation work a package does when it has accumulated too many special cases. The long gap and the CI-refresh content suggest maintenance attention rather than a new direction.
◆ Prediction
The stated gap is the unimplemented twitter method for anomalize(), which is the one concrete outstanding item the release notes name; beyond that the recent work points to consolidation rather than expansion.
Alternatives to forecast and timetk
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 forecast or timetk.
writexl
writexl spent nine years refusing to do formatting, then shipped all of it in 2.0.0.
rgbif
rgbif is steadily pushing users off paged searching and onto real downloads.
rstanarm
rstanarm is community-maintained now, tracking Stan and lme4 rather than adding models.
taxa
taxa started a ground-up rewrite in 2021 and has published almost nothing since.
rotl
rotl's whole release history is keeping name matching honest against a moving taxonomy.
See all forecast alternatives → · See all timetk alternatives →
Recent activity from forecast and timetk
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4mo agoforecastFixes for checkresiduals() and mstl() lambda handling
- 5mo agoforecastFaster ARFIMA search and forecast.mlm() argument handling
- 7mo agoforecastforecast 9.0.0 adds five model constructors and rewrites accuracy() ⚡
- 11mo agotimetktimetk 2.9.1 makes date parsing consistent across time classes
- 1y agoforecastDocumentation and bug-fix release
- 2y agoforecastRNG state and base-R head/tail compatibility
- 2y agoforecastMuch faster hfitted() for ARIMA and ETS models
- 2y agotimetktimetk 2.9.0 absorbs the anomalize package ⚡
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.8.1 exposes trelliscope plotting parameters
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.8.0 adds trelliscopejs support for many-series plots
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.7.0 adds tk_tsfeatures() for grouped feature matrices
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.6.2 adds .week_start and facet direction controls
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between forecast and timetk?
Both compete on the same themes — time-series — within Analytics. forecast and timetk 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 forecast better than timetk?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. forecast and timetk 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 forecast?
Top forecast alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "forecast alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/forecast-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to timetk?
Top timetk alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "timetk alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/timetk for the full list with editorial commentary on each.