lme4

Overview

About

Maintained by Ben BolkerFirst published 2003-06-25137 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Fit linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models. The models and their components are represented using S4 classes and methods. The core computational algorithms are implemented using the 'Eigen' C++ library for numerical linear algebra and 'RcppEigen' "glue".

Install

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

install.packages("lme4", 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("lme4/lme4")

Development version from lme4/lme4. 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-lme4

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

# 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-lme4

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

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

Slowest check: 19.6 min · r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-clang

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.79

71.8%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

16

Dependencies · direct

Check history

OK2026-07-23
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
ERROR2026-03-12
10 OK · 3 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 1 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-03-10
11 OK · 3 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMENoVignettesYes · dynamicpkgdown siteNoNEWSNoCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 100%
Documented parameters: 86%
Return-value docs: 75%
References docs: 23%

Downloads

7.1M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #109 · ~19.3K/day · ~587.6K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

663.4K30 days

2M90 days

7.1M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on49.2K r2u150 autocran198.6K conda_forge2.3K c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ lme4/lme4

694Stars

160Forks

191Open issues

7Open PRs

2Releases

3,834Commits

54Contributors

3,834 commits · Last activity 2026-07-18 · +0.7% stars, 30d

Stars over time

2025-07-13 · 6512026-07-19 · 692

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

3 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 2 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/lme4/lme4 on 2026-07-19.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsTravis CI

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

Makefile

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

30 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (4)

R >= 3.6Matrixmethodsstats

Imports (13)

MASSRdpackbootgraphicsgridlatticeminqa (>= 1.1.15)nlmenloptrparallelreformulassplinesutils

LinkingTo (3)

MatrixRcpp RcppEigen (>= 0.3.3.9.4)

Suggests (25)

DHARMa HSAUR3 MEMSS car dfoptim future.apply gamm4 ggplot2 glmmTMB gridExtra knitr merDerivmgcvmlmRev numDeriv optimx pbkrtest performance rmarkdown rr2 see semEff statmod testthat tibble

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

569direct

1,083indirect

and 521 more packages.

People & History

People (18)

Maintainer (1)

Ben Bolker

Maintainer, Author · added in 0.999375-38

Authors (6)

Ben Bolker

Maintainer, Author · added in 0.999375-38

Douglas Bates

Author

Mikael Jagan

Author · added in 1.1-35.3

Anna Ly

Author · added in 1.1-38

Martin Maechler

Author · added in 0.999375-16

Steven Walker

Author · added in 1.0-4

Contributors (12)

Alexander Bauer

Contributor · added in 1.1-25

Henrik Bengtsson

Contributor · added in 2.0-6

Ross D. Boylan

Contributor · added in 1.1-37

Rune Haubo Bojesen Christensen

Contributor · added in 1.1-5

Bin Dai

Contributor · added in 0.999375-18

John Fox

Contributor · added in 1.1-19

Peter Green

Contributor · added in 1.1-11

Gabor Grothendieck

Contributor · added in 1.1-8

Show 4 more contributors

Pavel N. Krivitsky

Contributor, Copyright holder · added in 1.1-25

Fabian Scheipl

Contributor · added in 1.1-15

Henrik Singmann

Contributor · added in 1.1-5

Emi Tanaka

Contributor · added in 1.1-35

Copyright holders (1)

Pavel N. Krivitsky

Contributor, Copyright holder · added in 1.1-25

Listed in earlier versions (5)

and Saikat DebRoy

no longer listed · 0.2-1 to 0.4-4

Saikat DebRoy

no longer listed · 0.4-7 to 0.5-2

and Deepayan Sarkar

no longer listed · 0.4-7 to 0.5-2

Deepayan Sarkar

no longer listed · 0.6-1 to 0.99875-2

and Bin Dai

no longer listed · 0.999375-16 to 0.999375-17

Package Timeline

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

2.0-6Latest
2026-07-16 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
2.0-1
2026-03-05 · diff ↗
1.1-38
2025-12-02 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
1.1-37
2025-03-26 · diff ↗
1.1-36
2025-01-11 · diff ↗
1.1-35.5
2024-07-03 · diff ↗
1.1-35.4
2024-06-19 · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
1.1-35.3
2024-04-16 · diff ↗
1.1-35.2
2024-03-28 · diff ↗
1.1-35.1
2023-11-05 · diff ↗
1.1-35
2023-11-03 · diff ↗
1.1-34
2023-07-05 · diff ↗
1.1-33
2023-04-25 · diff ↗

Show 154 earlier events

R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
1.1-32
2023-03-14 · diff ↗
1.1-31
2022-11-01 · diff ↗
1.1-30
2022-07-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
1.1-29
2022-04-07 · diff ↗
1.1-28
2022-02-05 · diff ↗
1.1-27.1
2021-06-22 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
1.1-27
2021-05-15 · diff ↗
1.1-26
2020-12-01 · diff ↗
1.1-25
2020-10-23 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
1.1-23
2020-04-07 · diff ↗
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
1.1-21
2019-03-05 · diff ↗
1.1-20
2019-02-04 · diff ↗
1.1-19
2018-11-10 · diff ↗
1.1-18-1
2018-08-18 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.1-17
2018-04-03 · diff ↗
1.1-16
2018-03-28 · diff ↗
1.1-15
2017-12-21 · diff ↗
1.1-14
2017-09-27 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
1.1-13
2017-04-19 · diff ↗
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
1.1-12
2016-04-16 · diff ↗
1.1-11
2016-02-12 · diff ↗
1.1-10
2015-10-06 · diff ↗
1.1-9
2015-08-20 · diff ↗
1.1-8
2015-06-22 · diff ↗
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
1.1-7
2014-07-19 · diff ↗
1.1-6
2014-04-13 · diff ↗
R
R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10
1.1-5
2014-03-14 · diff ↗
1.0-6
2014-02-02 · diff ↗
1.0-5
2013-10-25 · diff ↗
1.0-4
2013-09-21 · diff ↗
0.999999-2
2013-04-15 · diff ↗
R
R 3.0.0 released · 2013-04-03
0.999999-0
2012-06-23 · diff ↗
R
R 2.15.0 released · 2012-03-30
R
R 2.14.0 released · 2011-10-31
0.999375-42
2011-10-04 · diff ↗
0.999375-41
2011-08-09 · diff ↗
0.999375-40
2011-07-23 · diff ↗
R
R 2.13.0 released · 2011-04-13
0.999375-39
2011-03-08 · diff ↗
0.999375-38
2011-02-17 · diff ↗
0.999375-37
2010-11-10 · diff ↗
0.999375-36
2010-10-23 · diff ↗
R
R 2.12.0 released · 2010-10-15
0.999375-35
2010-08-19 · diff ↗
0.999375-34
2010-06-29 · diff ↗
R
R 2.11.0 released · 2010-04-22
0.999375-33
2010-04-02 · diff ↗
R
R 2.10.0 released · 2009-10-26
0.999375-32
2009-10-20 · diff ↗
0.999375-31
2009-05-24 · diff ↗
0.999375-30
2009-05-12 · diff ↗
R
R 2.9.0 released · 2009-04-17
0.999375-28
2008-12-14 · diff ↗
R
R 2.8.0 released · 2008-10-20
0.999375-27
2008-09-28 · diff ↗
0.999375-26
2008-08-26 · diff ↗
0.999375-25
2008-08-14 · diff ↗
0.999375-24
2008-08-06 · diff ↗
0.999375-23
2008-07-29 · diff ↗
0.999375-22
2008-07-12 · diff ↗
0.999375-21
2008-07-11 · diff ↗
0.999375-20
2008-06-26 · diff ↗
0.999375-19
2008-06-26 · diff ↗
0.999375-18
2008-06-25 · diff ↗
0.999375-17
2008-06-23 · diff ↗
0.999375-16
2008-06-23 · diff ↗
R
R 2.7.0 released · 2008-04-22
0.99875-9
2007-10-14 · diff ↗
R
R 2.6.0 released · 2007-10-03
0.99875-8
2007-09-26 · diff ↗
0.99875-7
2007-08-04 · diff ↗
0.99875-6
2007-07-10 · diff ↗
0.99875-5
2007-07-10 · diff ↗
0.99875-4
2007-07-07 · diff ↗
0.99875-2
2007-06-21 · diff ↗
0.99875-1
2007-06-11 · diff ↗
0.99875-0
2007-05-15 · diff ↗
R
R 2.5.0 released · 2007-04-24
0.9975-13
2007-02-11 · diff ↗
0.9975-12
2007-01-31 · diff ↗
0.9975-11
2007-01-26 · diff ↗
0.9975-10
2006-12-02 · diff ↗
0.9975-9
2006-11-15 · diff ↗
0.9975-8
2006-10-25 · diff ↗
0.9975-7
2006-10-19 · diff ↗
0.9975-6
2006-10-17 · diff ↗
0.9975-5
2006-10-16 · diff ↗
0.9975-4
2006-10-15 · diff ↗
0.9975-3
2006-10-11 · diff ↗
0.9975-1
2006-10-06 · diff ↗
0.9975-0
2006-10-03 · diff ↗
R
R 2.4.0 released · 2006-10-03
R
R 2.3.0 released · 2006-04-24
0.995-2
2006-01-20 · diff ↗
0.995-1
2006-01-17 · diff ↗
R
R 2.2.0 released · 2005-10-06
0.98-1
2005-07-28 · diff ↗
0.96-1
2005-06-13 · diff ↗
0.95-10
2005-05-31 · diff ↗
0.95-9
2005-05-30 · diff ↗
0.95-8
2005-05-20 · diff ↗
0.95-7
2005-05-18 · diff ↗
0.95-6
2005-04-19 · diff ↗
R
R 2.1.0 released · 2005-04-18
0.95-5
2005-04-12 · diff ↗
0.95-4
2005-04-07 · diff ↗
0.95-3
2005-04-06 · diff ↗
0.95-1
2005-04-02 · diff ↗
0.9-2
2005-02-28 · diff ↗
0.9-1
2005-02-25 · diff ↗
0.8-3
2005-02-21 · diff ↗
0.8-2
2005-01-25 · diff ↗
0.8-1
2005-01-24 · diff ↗
0.6-12
2005-01-24 · diff ↗
0.6-11
2004-12-17 · diff ↗
0.6-10
2004-12-14 · diff ↗
0.6-9
2004-10-06 · diff ↗
R
R 2.0.0 released · 2004-10-04
0.6-7
2004-09-15 · diff ↗
0.6-6
2004-09-14 · diff ↗
0.6-5
2004-09-06 · diff ↗
0.6-4
2004-07-10 · diff ↗
0.6-3
2004-07-07 · diff ↗
0.6-2
2004-06-08 · diff ↗
0.6-1
2004-06-02 · diff ↗
0.5-2
2004-04-12 · diff ↗
R
R 1.9.0 released · 2004-04-12
0.4-7
2004-01-28 · diff ↗
0.4-4
2003-10-15 · diff ↗
R
R 1.8.0 released · 2003-10-08
0.4-3
2003-10-01 · diff ↗
0.3-7
2003-09-02 · diff ↗
0.3-6
2003-08-28 · diff ↗
0.3-5
2003-08-12 · diff ↗
0.3-4
2003-08-12 · diff ↗
0.3-3
2003-07-23 · diff ↗
0.3-2
2003-07-21 · diff ↗
0.3-1
2003-07-18 · diff ↗
0.2-4
2003-07-15 · diff ↗
0.2-3
2003-07-04 · diff ↗
0.2-2
2003-07-01 · diff ↗
0.2-1
2003-06-25
R
R 1.7.0 released · 2003-04-16

Package metadata

First published: 2003-06-25
Total releases: 137 / 23 yrs
License: GPL (>= 2) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.6
Bundled data: 163 KB / 18 files
Download size: 3.5 MB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Appears in task views

Clinical Trial Design, Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Econometrics Analysis of Ecological and Environmental Data Mixed, Multilevel, and Hierarchical Models in R Psychometric Models and Methods Handling and Analyzing Spatio-Temporal Data