rnaturalearth
rnaturalearth finished its sp exit and is now optimising how the data actually arrives.
Comparison · Analytics
gganimate vs modelbased
A side-by-side editorial comparison of gganimate and modelbased — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
gganimate vs modelbased: at a glance
What is gganimate?
gganimate is in caretaker mode, tracking ggplot2 and little else
gganimate animates ggplot2 graphics, and its recent releases are almost entirely about staying compatible with ggplot2 itself. The last two releases exist to adapt to ggplot2 v4; the substantive work sits back in 1.0.9, which fixed transition bugs and moved internals onto vctrs, cli and lifecycle.
What is modelbased?
modelbased is turning marginal effects into a full contrast grammar
modelbased computes marginal means, contrasts, and slopes from fitted models, and it ships every one to two months with a consistent shape: new comparison types, broader model support, and steady renaming toward clearer vocabulary. The recent arc runs from marginal effects inequality measures through inequality ratios to an omnibus global test and a post_process argument for multi-step comparisons. Argument names have been settled along the way, with trend becoming slope and an alias left behind.
gganimate vs modelbased: editorial side-by-side
gganimate
0.0ANALYTICS
gganimate is in caretaker mode, tracking ggplot2 and little else
◆ Current state
gganimate animates ggplot2 graphics, and its recent releases are almost entirely about staying compatible with ggplot2 itself. The last two releases exist to adapt to ggplot2 v4; the substantive work sits back in 1.0.9, which fixed transition bugs and moved internals onto vctrs, cli and lifecycle.
◆ Where it's heading
Development is reactive rather than directional: the package follows ggplot2's internal changes and fixes transition edge cases as they are reported. Renderer work — ragg support, dropping the png dependency for gifski — has been the only place new capability appeared, and that was several years ago.
◆ Prediction
The next release is most likely another ggplot2 compatibility pass; nothing in these entries points to new transition types or renderers.
modelbased
0.0ANALYTICS
modelbased is turning marginal effects into a full contrast grammar
◆ Current state
modelbased computes marginal means, contrasts, and slopes from fitted models, and it ships every one to two months with a consistent shape: new comparison types, broader model support, and steady renaming toward clearer vocabulary. The recent arc runs from marginal effects inequality measures through inequality ratios to an omnibus global test and a post_process argument for multi-step comparisons. Argument names have been settled along the way, with trend becoming slope and an alias left behind.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is building a compositional vocabulary rather than a fixed menu — contrasts of average slopes, contrasts across two numeric predictors, inequality summaries across all outcome categories, and now user-supplied post-processing of comparisons. Support quietly widens underneath, covering nestedLogit, brms finite mixtures, and offsets under population and average estimation. Plotting gets attention in proportion to how often these results are presented rather than tabulated, including collapse_by_group() for showing averaged raw data under mixed-model fits.
◆ Prediction
With post_process and omnibus tests both landed, the likely next step is making these composed comparisons easier to report — formatting or plotting methods for the multi-step results rather than new comparison types.
Alternatives to gganimate and modelbased
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 gganimate or modelbased.
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 gganimate alternatives → · See all modelbased alternatives →
Recent activity from gganimate and modelbased
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agomodelbasedmodelbased 0.16.0 adds post-processing and omnibus contrast tests
- 3mo agomodelbasedmodelbased 0.15.0 contrasts average slopes across numeric predictors
- 5mo agomodelbasedmodelbased 0.14.0 renames trend to slope and adds collapse_by_group()
- 8mo agomodelbasedmodelbased 0.13.1 adds marginal group-level estimates and as.data.frame()
- 11mo agogganimateLabel rendering fix for ggplot2 v4
- 11mo agomodelbasedmodelbased 0.13.0 adds inequality ratios and slope marginalization
- 1y agomodelbasedmodelbased 0.12.0 introduces marginal effects inequality measures
- 1y agogganimateAdapted for the upcoming ggplot2 release
- 2y agogganimateTransition fixes and a move onto vctrs, cli and lifecycle
- 3y agogganimateTransition and ffmpeg detection bug fixes
- 5y agogganimateSupport for the ragg PNG device
- 6y agogganimategifski rendering no longer needs the png package
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between gganimate and modelbased?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. gganimate and modelbased 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 gganimate better than modelbased?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. gganimate and modelbased 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 gganimate?
Top gganimate alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "gganimate alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gganimate for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to modelbased?
Top modelbased alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "modelbased alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/modelbased for the full list with editorial commentary on each.