brms | R Observatory

Overview

About

Maintained by Paul-Christian BürknerFirst published 2015-05-0862 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Fit Bayesian generalized (non-)linear multivariate multilevel models using 'Stan' for full Bayesian inference. A wide range of distributions and link functions are supported, allowing users to fit -- among others -- linear, robust linear, count data, survival, response times, ordinal, zero-inflated, hurdle, and even self-defined mixture models all in a multilevel context. Further modeling options include both theory-driven and data-driven non-linear terms, auto-correlation structures, censoring and truncation, meta-analytic standard errors, and quite a few more. In addition, all parameters of the response distribution can be predicted in order to perform distributional regression. Prior specifications are flexible and explicitly encourage users to apply prior distributions that actually reflect their prior knowledge. Models can easily be evaluated and compared using several methods assessing posterior or prior predictions. References: Bürkner (2017) doi:10.18637/jss.v080.i01; Bürkner (2018) doi:10.32614/RJ-2018-017; Bürkner (2021) doi:10.18637/jss.v100.i05; Carpenter et al. (2017) doi:10.18637/jss.v076.i01.

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("brms", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("paul-buerkner/brms")

Development version from paul-buerkner/brms. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-brms

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-brms

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-brms

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

2NOTE11OK

Failing flavors

NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-clang
NOTE r-devel-linux-x86_64-debian-gcc

Slowest check: 16.1 min · r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-clang

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.20

81.4%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

25

Dependencies · direct

Check history

NOTE2026-07-11
12 OK · 1 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-06-27
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
WARNING2026-06-14
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 1 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-06-09
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
ERROR2026-06-08
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 1 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Show 2 earlier snapshots

OK2026-04-25
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-03-10
11 OK · 3 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMEYes · 1,635 wordsVignettesYes · dynamicpkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 21%
Documented parameters: 97%
Return-value docs: 68%
References docs: 8%

Downloads

554.6K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #485 · ~1.5K/day · ~46.2K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

56.1K30 days

171.5K90 days

554.6K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on8.4K r2u201 autocran10.6K conda_forge291 c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ paul-buerkner/brms

1,418Stars

222Forks

139Open issues

8Open PRs

56Releases

5,656Commits

73Contributors

brmsstanbayesian-inferencemultilevel-modelsstatistical-modelsr-package

License GPL-2.0 · 5,656 commits · Last activity 2026-07-22 · +0.2% stars, 30d

Stars over time

2025-07-22 · 1,3282026-07-16 · 1,418

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

6 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 5 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/paul-buerkner/brms on 2026-07-19.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

CRAN release process (1)

CRAN-SUBMISSION

Docs source (1)

README.Rmd

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

Show all practices

Governance and community (2)

Issue templatesFunding

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

48 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (3)

R >= 3.6.0Rcppmethods

Imports (23)

rstan ggplot2 loo posteriorMatrixmgcvrstantools bayesplot bridgesampling (>= 0.3-0)glue rlang future future.apply matrixStats nleqslvnlmecoda abindstatsutilsparallelgrDevicesbackports

LinkingTo (0)

none

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

86direct

1indirect

and 38 more packages.

Code & Tests

Code Composition

R 53,627 (74%)Rd 13,806 (19%)Vignettes 2,919 (4%)Other 2,399 (3%)

Code characteristics

Object systems

S3331

Cyclomatic complexity: 1.0 median / 112 max
Test cases: 352 / 0.20 per code line
System requirements: 1 external

Test coverage

Line coverage

81%

Expression

80.6%

Tests / Examples

81.4% / – ex

Functions

1819 260 exported

Complexity

3.2 avg / 112 max

Call network

1819 nodes / 5274 edges

Call graph

Open call graph →

Loading call graph…

Lowest coverage

1819 functions

Function	Cyclo	Coverage
add_ic exp	1	0%
add_ic<- exp	1	0%
add_loo exp	2	0%
add_rstan_model exp	3	0%
add_waic exp	2	0%
brm_multiple exp	18	0%

Datasets

Bundled datasets · 4

Name	Class	Rows × Cols	Also ships in
epilepsy	data.frame	236 × 9	–
inhaler	data.frame	572 × 5	–
kidney	data.frame	76 × 7	–
loss	data.frame	55 × 4	–

People & History

People (19)

Maintainer (1)

Paul-Christian Bürkner

Author, Maintainer · added in 1.3.0

Authors (1)

Paul-Christian Bürkner

Author, Maintainer · added in 1.3.0

Contributors (18)

Hamada S. Badr

Contributor · added in 2.16.0

Mattan S. Ben-Shachar

Contributor · added in 2.16.0

Luiz Carvalho

Contributor · added in 2.23.0

Jonah Gabry

Contributor · added in 2.13.3

Andrew Johnson

Contributor · added in 2.15.0

Noa Kallioinen

Contributor · added in 2.23.0

Ioannis Kosmidis

Contributor · added in 2.23.0

Simon C. Mills

Contributor · added in 2.18.0

Show 10 more contributors

Martin Modrak

Contributor · added in 2.15.0

Sermet Pekin

Contributor · added in 2.23.0

Ven Popov

Contributor · added in 2.21.0

Hayden Rabel

Contributor · added in 2.17.0

Ben Schneider

Contributor · added in 2.23.0

Wellington J. Silva

Contributor · added in 2.23.0

Aki Vehtari

Contributor · added in 2.21.0

Frank Weber

Contributor · added in 2.16.0

Sebastian Weber

Contributor · added in 2.14.0

Stephen Wild

Contributor · added in 2.19.0

Listed in earlier versions (1)

Paul-Christian Buerkner

no longer listed · 0.1.0 to 1.2.0

Package Timeline

62 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
2.23.0Latest
2025-09-09 · current release · diff ↗
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R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
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R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
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R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
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R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
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2.16.1
2021-08-23 · diff ↗

Show 58 earlier events

2.16.0
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R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
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R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
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R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
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R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
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2015-05-27 · diff ↗
0.1.0
2015-05-08
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16

Package metadata

First published: 2015-05-08
Total releases: 62 / 11 yrs
License: GPL-2 OSI
Additional repositories: stan-dev.r-universe.dev
Minimum R: ≥ 3.6.0
Bundled data: 5.3 KB / 4 files
Download size: 4.9 MB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Appears in task views

Bayesian Inference Meta-Analysis Mixed, Multilevel, and Hierarchical Models in R Phylogenetics