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Comparison · Infra & APIs
FoReco vs SLmetrics
A side-by-side editorial comparison of FoReco and SLmetrics — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
FoReco vs SLmetrics: at a glance
What is FoReco?
Forecast reconciliation with a real object model, five years after it started returning bare matrices.
FoReco reconciles hierarchical forecasts across cross-sectional, temporal, and cross-temporal frameworks, and now covers both point and probabilistic reconciliation. The 1.3.0 release gave every reconciliation function a shared foreco S3 class carrying framework, function, forecast type, and reconciliation metadata, which replaced the loose attribute-and-helper pattern the package had used since 1.0.0. The follow-up 1.3.1 turned the same attention on the API's edges: strict argument validation with errors that name the expected and supplied values, and a help index pruned down to user-facing functions only.
What is SLmetrics?
A young ML metrics package rewrote its own backend twice in six months chasing speed.
SLmetrics provides supervised learning evaluation metrics for R — confusion matrices, classification and regression measures, ROC and precision-recall curves — with the computation pushed into C++. After a series of pre-releases it now runs on an Armadillo backend, supports OpenMP parallelism and LAPACK/BLAS, and reports 5-20x speedups over its earlier implementations. The API has been reshaped for extensibility, with an estimator argument replacing the fixed aggregation options.
FoReco vs SLmetrics: editorial side-by-side
FoReco
0.0INFRA · APIS
Forecast reconciliation with a real object model, five years after it started returning bare matrices.
◆ Current state
FoReco reconciles hierarchical forecasts across cross-sectional, temporal, and cross-temporal frameworks, and now covers both point and probabilistic reconciliation. The 1.3.0 release gave every reconciliation function a shared foreco S3 class carrying framework, function, forecast type, and reconciliation metadata, which replaced the loose attribute-and-helper pattern the package had used since 1.0.0. The follow-up 1.3.1 turned the same attention on the API's edges: strict argument validation with errors that name the expected and supplied values, and a help index pruned down to user-facing functions only.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is completing a reversal it started in 1.0.0. That release simplified outputs to plain matrices and pushed metadata into attributes reachable via recoinfo(); 1.3.0 removed recoinfo() outright and put the structure back as a class with components(), summary(), and plot() methods. The direction is toward being infrastructure rather than a function library — the class is exported through new_foreco_class() and a sibling package has already adopted it. Method coverage has meanwhile broadened from optimal combination into non-negative algorithms, bounded reconciliation, and Gaussian and sample-based probabilistic variants.
◆ Prediction
The soft-deprecated res2matrix() is flagged for removal, so a subsequent release should finish that cleanup; with the class now exported, expect more methods to hang off foreco objects rather than more top-level functions.
SLmetrics
0.0INFRA · APIS
A young ML metrics package rewrote its own backend twice in six months chasing speed.
◆ Current state
SLmetrics provides supervised learning evaluation metrics for R — confusion matrices, classification and regression measures, ROC and precision-recall curves — with the computation pushed into C++. After a series of pre-releases it now runs on an Armadillo backend, supports OpenMP parallelism and LAPACK/BLAS, and reports 5-20x speedups over its earlier implementations. The API has been reshaped for extensibility, with an estimator argument replacing the fixed aggregation options.
◆ Where it's heading
Every release in this timeline is about making the same metrics compute faster or compose better. The backend moved from Rcpp to plain C++, gained OpenMP, then was ported wholesale from Eigen to Armadillo with heavy templating. In parallel the author has been widening the API's joints: generic S3 signatures, an extensible estimator argument, and function signatures loose enough that wrapping packages can rename arguments. Bundled datasets and embedded formulas in the docs point at teaching and benchmarking use. The package still labels itself pre-release, which is consistent with how freely it has broken argument names along the way.
◆ Prediction
A stable non-pre-release version is the natural next step now that the backend has settled on Armadillo, though the repeated willingness to rename arguments suggests more API churn may come first.
Alternatives to FoReco and SLmetrics
Other Infra & APIs 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 FoReco or SLmetrics.
forestploter
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
ggInterval
Interval-valued data plotting, spending 2026 making its function names and examples survive CRAN.
rgm
A microbiome network model that got itself un-archived by deleting the dependency that killed it.
contagionchannels
Three releases in ten days, every one of them a CRAN reviewer's correction rather than a code change.
tidyaudit
Pipeline provenance for tidyverse workflows, recording what changed at each step without keeping the data.
See all FoReco alternatives → · See all SLmetrics alternatives →
Recent activity from FoReco and SLmetrics
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoFoRecoStrict argument validation and a pruned help index
- 1mo agoFoRecoEvery reconciliation function now returns a shared foreco object ⚡
- 3mo agoFoRecoBootstrap functions gain xreg; simulate() argument bug fixed
- 5mo agoFoRecoGaussian and sample-based probabilistic reconciliation added
- 1y agoFoRecoBounded reconciliation and an oracle shrunk covariance estimator
- 1y agoSLmetricsArmadillo backend brings 5-20x speedups and an extensible metrics API ⚡
- 1y agoSLmetricsConsistent S3 signatures and three bundled datasets
- 1y agoSLmetricsRegression metrics 2-10x faster with reworked OpenMP controls
- 1y agoSLmetricsOpenMP parallelism and a soft-label entropy family
- 1y agoSLmetricsCross-entropy loss and relative RMSE with three normalisations
- 1y agoSLmetricsSample weights flow through the confusion matrix
- 1y agoFoRecoBreaking rename: cs, te and ct prefixes across all functions
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between FoReco and SLmetrics?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. FoReco and SLmetrics 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 FoReco better than SLmetrics?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. FoReco and SLmetrics 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to FoReco?
Top FoReco alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "FoReco alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/foreco for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to SLmetrics?
Top SLmetrics alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "SLmetrics alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/slmetrics for the full list with editorial commentary on each.