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Comparison · Analytics
pedprobr vs StreamCatTools
A side-by-side editorial comparison of pedprobr and StreamCatTools — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
pedprobr vs StreamCatTools: at a glance
What is pedprobr?
pedprobr is the likelihood engine, and it keeps finding ways to compute what it previously could not.
pedprobr computes pedigree likelihoods for the ped suite. Version 1.1.0 updated its loop handling to match pedtools 2.11.0, including founder and repeated loop breakers, and improved the peeling algorithm with single-child shortcuts and lower memory use. Version 1.0.0 was the other expansion: special lumping lets markers with mutation models that are un-lumpable in the Kemeny-Snell sense be lumped anyway in certain cases, with alleleLimit as a fallback for the rest.
What is StreamCatTools?
StreamCatTools is quietly moving off web services and onto cloud-native GeoParquet
StreamCatTools is the R client for the US EPA's StreamCat and LakeCat watershed metrics datasets. Through 2025 it worked almost entirely against the StreamCat web API, and much of its release history is about making those HTTP calls survive real conditions — POST bodies for long COMID lists, tryCatch around service outages, tests that skip when the service is down. 0.11.0 in May 2026 introduces a different data path.
pedprobr vs StreamCatTools: editorial side-by-side
pedprobr
0.0ANALYTICS
pedprobr is the likelihood engine, and it keeps finding ways to compute what it previously could not.
◆ Current state
pedprobr computes pedigree likelihoods for the ped suite. Version 1.1.0 updated its loop handling to match pedtools 2.11.0, including founder and repeated loop breakers, and improved the peeling algorithm with single-child shortcuts and lower memory use. Version 1.0.0 was the other expansion: special lumping lets markers with mutation models that are un-lumpable in the Kemeny-Snell sense be lumped anyway in certain cases, with alleleLimit as a fallback for the rest.
◆ Where it's heading
Every significant release here removes a class of computation that used to be infeasible, either by making a marker lumpable or by making a loop breakable. The rest is steady peeling-algorithm optimization, which has been reducing memory footprint release after release since 0.9.2. The newly added .diagnostics option suggests the peeling internals are now complex enough that the maintainer needs to inspect them.
◆ Prediction
Since special lumping is documented as covering only some cases so far, expect further lumping situations to be implemented as pedmut adds them.
StreamCatTools
0.0ANALYTICS
StreamCatTools is quietly moving off web services and onto cloud-native GeoParquet
◆ Current state
StreamCatTools is the R client for the US EPA's StreamCat and LakeCat watershed metrics datasets. Through 2025 it worked almost entirely against the StreamCat web API, and much of its release history is about making those HTTP calls survive real conditions — POST bodies for long COMID lists, tryCatch around service outages, tests that skip when the service is down. 0.11.0 in May 2026 introduces a different data path.
◆ Where it's heading
The newest release adds lc_get_watershed(), which returns a lake watershed as an sf feature by reading an S3-hosted, HUC2-partitioned GeoParquet dataset with DuckDB, optional HUC2 filtering, retries and multi-threading. That is a materially different access model from the web service the rest of the package uses. Alongside it, 0.10.0 added National Nutrient Inventory access and nitrogen/phosphorus budget plotting, extending the package past retrieval into presentation.
◆ Prediction
If the GeoParquet path proves faster and more reliable than the web service, migrating more retrieval functions onto it is the obvious next move. The entries do not say whether EPA intends to publish the full metric catalogue in that format.
Alternatives to pedprobr and StreamCatTools
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 pedprobr or StreamCatTools.
spsurvey
spsurvey has spent four years consolidating after its 5.0.0 rewrite rather than adding to it
reproducible
reproducible added a windowed read path so remote GeoTiffs never fully download
qcTAF
qcTAF is building an automated checklist for reproducible fisheries assessments, one criterion at a time
rpymat
After three dormant years, rpymat returned to fix the OpenMP crash that breaks R and conda together
ieegio
ieegio's first release lands electrode trajectory burning and a WebGL-free surface plot
See all pedprobr alternatives → · See all StreamCatTools alternatives →
Recent activity from pedprobr and StreamCatTools
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agopedprobrLoop handling updated for pedtools' new loop breakers
- 3mo agoStreamCatToolsLake watersheds read from S3-hosted GeoParquet via DuckDB
- 6mo agoStreamCatToolsNational Nutrient Inventory access and budget plotting
- 9mo agoStreamCatToolsSkip tests when web service is down; vignettes converted to articles
- 10mo agoStreamCatToolsGraceful failure when web services are unavailable
- 10mo agoStreamCatToolsMetric name search and vector arguments for data retrieval
- 11mo agoStreamCatToolsData requests moved to POST body for long COMID lists
- 1y agopedprobrCRAN example rounding fix
- 1y agopedprobrSpecial lumping for previously un-lumpable mutation models
- 1y agopedprobrGenotype distributions gain sparse and table output
- 2y agopedprobrPeeling order bug fix
- 2y agopedprobrPartial genotype fix for singletons
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between pedprobr and StreamCatTools?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. pedprobr and StreamCatTools 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 pedprobr better than StreamCatTools?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. pedprobr and StreamCatTools 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 pedprobr?
Top pedprobr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "pedprobr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/pedprobr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to StreamCatTools?
Top StreamCatTools alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "StreamCatTools alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/streamcattools for the full list with editorial commentary on each.