mlr3proba
mlr3proba is shedding weight as its survival work moves into sibling packages
A side-by-side editorial comparison of probably and tidypredict — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The package that made calibration a step instead of an afterthought.
probably started as a small utility for class predictions and equivocal zones, and version 1.0.0 turned it into tidymodels' calibration and uncertainty package: cal_plot_*, cal_estimate_*, cal_validate_* and cal_apply across binary, multiclass and regression problems, plus conformal prediction intervals. Since then the work has been consolidation — a large internal refactor with no API change, split conformal and conformal quantile regression, bound_prediction(), and required_pkgs() and butcher methods so conformal objects can be deployed and stripped.
tidypredict now translates the gradient-boosting libraries people actually deploy
tidypredict converts fitted R models into SQL and dplyr expressions so predictions can run inside a database instead of in R. The 1.1.0 release added rpart, CatBoost, and LightGBM, with full objective and tree-type coverage for the boosted models. That followed 1.0.0, which broke random-forest output into a single formula, added glmnet, and cut fit-translation time for xgboost, partykit, and ranger.
probably started as a small utility for class predictions and equivocal zones, and version 1.0.0 turned it into tidymodels' calibration and uncertainty package: cal_plot_*, cal_estimate_*, cal_validate_* and cal_apply across binary, multiclass and regression problems, plus conformal prediction intervals. Since then the work has been consolidation — a large internal refactor with no API change, split conformal and conformal quantile regression, bound_prediction(), and required_pkgs() and butcher methods so conformal objects can be deployed and stripped.
The recent releases are about making these objects survive leaving the session. butcher and required_pkgs() methods are what a model needs to be pinned, containerised and served, and their arrival alongside workflows adding a tailor postprocessing stage and vetiver adding probably support points the same way: calibration is being moved out of analysis scripts and into the deployed pipeline. The cal_*_none() reference implementations are the tell that calibration is now something people tune rather than apply once.
Expect the calibration functions to be reachable directly from a tuned workflow's postprocessing stage rather than applied to predictions afterwards, following the tailor integration that workflows just shipped.
tidypredict converts fitted R models into SQL and dplyr expressions so predictions can run inside a database instead of in R. The 1.1.0 release added rpart, CatBoost, and LightGBM, with full objective and tree-type coverage for the boosted models. That followed 1.0.0, which broke random-forest output into a single formula, added glmnet, and cut fit-translation time for xgboost, partykit, and ranger.
The package's value scales directly with how many model types it can translate, and the recent work has concentrated on the tree ensembles that dominate tabular modelling in practice. Coverage now extends past what parsnip wraps, since raw CatBoost models are supported alongside parsnip and bonsai ones with an explicit escape hatch for categorical features. Performance work on the translation step suggests the models being converted have grown large enough for that to matter.
With the major boosting libraries covered, the remaining gap is what happens to preprocessing, so tighter integration with recipes or orbital for translating whole workflows is the natural next step.
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 probably or tidypredict.
mlr3proba is shedding weight as its survival work moves into sibling packages
mlr3viz keeps the ecosystem's plots working while the plots themselves move out
mlr3tuning is rebuilding its async machinery under a stable public surface
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
modelbased is turning marginal effects into a full contrast grammar
easystats' parameters package absorbs one more model class every few weeks
See all probably alternatives → · See all tidypredict alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. probably and tidypredict 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. probably and tidypredict 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.
Top probably alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "probably alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/probably for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top tidypredict alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidypredict alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidypredict for the full list with editorial commentary on each.