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Comparison · Analytics
survminer vs tidytab
A side-by-side editorial comparison of survminer and tidytab — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
survminer vs tidytab: at a glance
What is survminer?
survminer is back after a five-year gap, and spending it cutting dependencies loose.
survminer draws Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox diagnostics on top of ggplot2, and it sits under a large share of published survival figures. After a long dormancy it has shipped three releases since late 2024, and all of them are about staying compatible: with ggplot2 3.5, then 4.0, and now without survMisc, whose weighted log-rank tests are computed internally in base R as of 0.5.2. The plotting API itself has not changed.
What is tidytab?
A young tabulation helper whose first releases are all dependency modernisation
tidytab is a small R package for tidyverse-style tabulation, three releases into its public life. Nothing so far has added functionality: 0.2.0 fixed a cumulative-percentage calculation and moved to the base R pipe, and 0.3.0 swapped a retired purrr function for tidyr::expand_grid. The one substantive user-facing item in the history is the cumulative percentage fix.
survminer vs tidytab: editorial side-by-side
survminer
0.0ANALYTICS
survminer is back after a five-year gap, and spending it cutting dependencies loose.
◆ Current state
survminer draws Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox diagnostics on top of ggplot2, and it sits under a large share of published survival figures. After a long dormancy it has shipped three releases since late 2024, and all of them are about staying compatible: with ggplot2 3.5, then 4.0, and now without survMisc, whose weighted log-rank tests are computed internally in base R as of 0.5.2. The plotting API itself has not changed.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a revival by maintenance, not by feature work — the same pattern as its sibling packages from the same author. The dependency surface is being reduced rather than extended, and each release absorbs a breaking change from ggplot2 that would otherwise leave existing scripts producing errors or misaligned risk tables. Compatibility fixes now arrive within months of the upstream change rather than years.
◆ Prediction
Continued ggplot2 4.x tracking is the most likely next release content, since 0.5.2 already carries fixes for 4.0.x aesthetics and the GeomConfint stairstep problem.
tidytab
0.0ANALYTICS
A young tabulation helper whose first releases are all dependency modernisation
◆ Current state
tidytab is a small R package for tidyverse-style tabulation, three releases into its public life. Nothing so far has added functionality: 0.2.0 fixed a cumulative-percentage calculation and moved to the base R pipe, and 0.3.0 swapped a retired purrr function for tidyr::expand_grid. The one substantive user-facing item in the history is the cumulative percentage fix.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being brought up to current tidyverse conventions by a wave of first-time contributors — six of them in 0.2.0 alone — rather than developed by a sustained maintainer effort. That makes the near-term direction predictable and narrow: retire deprecated idioms, keep CRAN checks clean. There is not yet enough history to say what the package intends to become.
◆ Prediction
With deprecated tidyselect and purrr usage now cleared, the remaining work of this kind is thin, so the next release will show whether the contributor interest converts into new tabulation features or the package settles at its current surface.
Alternatives to survminer and tidytab
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 survminer or tidytab.
epikit
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
broman
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
qtl
R/qtl is in pure custodial mode: every recent release answers a compiler, not a user
See all survminer alternatives → · See all tidytab alternatives →
Recent activity from survminer and tidytab
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agosurvminersurvMisc dependency removed; weighted log-rank tests moved in-house
- 7mo agotidytabpurrr::cross2() replaced with tidyr::expand_grid()
- 8mo agotidytabCumulative percentage fixed; base pipe replaces magrittr
- 9mo agotidytabNEWS.md added to track changes
- 11mo agosurvminerRisk-table misalignment fixed via dynamic panel detection
- 1y agosurvminerggcoxzph() sd scaling corrected; tidyverse deprecations cleared
- 5y agosurvminerGehan-Breslow p-value corrected for log.rank.weights = n
- 6y agosurvminerbroom 0.7.0 compatibility fix in ggforest()
- 6y agosurvminersurv_adjustedcurves() separates computation from plotting
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between survminer and tidytab?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. survminer and tidytab 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 survminer better than tidytab?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. survminer and tidytab 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 survminer?
Top survminer alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "survminer alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/survminer for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to tidytab?
Top tidytab alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidytab alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidytab-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.