rstan

Overview

About

Maintained by Ben GoodrichFirst published 2015-07-1832 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

User-facing R functions are provided to parse, compile, test, estimate, and analyze Stan models by accessing the header-only Stan library provided by the 'StanHeaders' package. The Stan project develops a probabilistic programming language that implements full Bayesian statistical inference via Markov Chain Monte Carlo, rough Bayesian inference via 'variational' approximation, and (optionally penalized) maximum likelihood estimation via optimization. In all three cases, automatic differentiation is used to quickly and accurately evaluate gradients without burdening the user with the need to derive the partial derivatives.

Install

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

install.packages("rstan", 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("stan-dev/rstan")

Development version from stan-dev/rstan. 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-rstan

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-rstan

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-rstan

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

Health

CRAN checks

4NOTE9OK

Failing flavors

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

Slowest check: 16.3 min · r-oldrel-macos-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.41

15.3%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

11

Dependencies · direct

Check history

NOTE2026-07-16
11 OK · 2 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-06-08
13 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
WARNING2026-06-07
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 1 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
OK2026-04-25
12 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE
NOTE2026-04-22
11 OK · 3 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Show 2 earlier snapshots

ERROR2026-04-18
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: 51%
Documented parameters: 90%
Return-value docs: 86%
References docs: 41%

Downloads

8M

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #47 · ~22K/day · ~668.1K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.4M30 days

3.4M90 days

8M1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on13.8K r2u122 autocran21.2K conda_forge498 c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ stan-dev/rstan

1,080Stars

270Forks

344Open issues

12Open PRs

11Releases

4,156Commits

81Contributors

stanmcmcbayesian-inferencebayesian-data-analysisbayesian-statisticsrr-package

4,156 commits · Last activity 2026-07-22 · +0.2% stars, 30d

Stars over time

2025-06-10 · 1,0512026-07-07 · 1,080

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

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

Checks run against github.com/stan-dev/rstan on 2026-07-19.

Continuous integration (1)

GitHub Actions

CRAN release process (1)

revdep/

Automation and maintenance (1)

Dependabot

Governance and community (3)

Issue templatesPR templateFunding

Show all practices

Git structural (1)

Submodules

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

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

23 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (2)

R >= 3.4.0StanHeaders

Imports (10)

methodsstats4inline gridExtra Rcpp RcppParallel loo pkgbuild QuickJSR ggplot2

LinkingTo (5)

Rcpp RcppEigen BH StanHeaders RcppParallel

Suggests (12)

testthatparallelKernSmoothshinystan bayesplot rmarkdown rstantools rstudioapiMatrixknitr coda V8

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

254direct

0indirect

and 345 more packages.

Code & Tests

Code Composition

R 11,203 (52%)Rd 4,332 (20%)C++ 2,478 (11%)Other 2,275 (11%)Vignettes 1,258 (6%)Stan 18 (0%)

Code characteristics

Object systems

S315S4 class3S4 generic28S4 method35

Cyclomatic complexity: 2.0 median / 89 max
Test cases: 58 / 0.41 per code line
System requirements: 2 external

Test coverage

Line coverage

15%

Expression

16.0%

Tests / Examples

15.3% / 17% ex

Functions

359 50 exported

Complexity

4.7 avg / 89 max

Call network

359 nodes / 365 edges

Call graph

Open call graph →

Loading call graph…

Lowest coverage

359 functions

Function	Cyclo	Coverage
As.mcmc.list exp	3	0%
Rhat exp	1	0%
check_divergences exp	2	0%
check_energy exp	2	0%
check_hmc_diagnostics exp	1	0%
check_treedepth exp	2	0%

People & History

People (18)

Maintainer (1)

Ben Goodrich

Maintainer, Author

Authors (6)

Ben Goodrich

Maintainer, Author

Hamada S. Badr

Author · added in 2.26.23

Jonah Gabry

Author · added in 2.8.0

Jiqiang Guo

Author

Andrew Johnson

Author · added in 2.26.23

Sebastian Weber

Author · added in 2.21.1

Contributors (4)

Daniel Lee

Contributor

Modrak Martin

Contributor · added in 2.18.1

Krzysztof Sakrejda

Contributor · added in 2.8.0

Bronder Steve

Contributor · added in 2.21.2

Copyright holders (8)

Nikhar Agrawal

Copyright holder · added in 2.21.1

Paul Bristow

Copyright holder · added in 2.21.1

Trustees of Columbia University

Copyright holder · added in 2.10.1

The R Core Team

Copyright holder · added in 2.10.1

Christopher Kormanyos

Copyright holder · added in 2.21.1

John Maddock

Copyright holder · added in 2.21.1

Jens Oehlschlaegel-Akiyoshi

Copyright holder · added in 2.10.1

Oleg Sklyar

Copyright holder · added in 2.10.1

Listed in earlier versions (5)

John Fletcher

no longer listed · 2.7.0-1 to 2.17.4

Thomas Heller

no longer listed · 2.7.0-1 to 2.17.4

Eric Niebler

no longer listed · 2.7.0-1 to 2.17.4

Joel de Guzman

no longer listed · 2.7.0-1 to 2.17.4

Hadley Wickham

no longer listed · 2.10.1 to 2.18.1

Package Timeline

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

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
2.32.7Latest
2025-03-10 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
2.32.6
2024-03-05 · diff ↗
2.32.5
2024-01-10 · diff ↗
2.32.3
2023-10-15 · diff ↗
2.26.23
2023-09-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
2.21.8
2023-01-17 · diff ↗
2.21.7
2022-09-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
2.21.5
2022-04-11 · diff ↗
2.21.3
2021-12-20 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
2.21.2
2020-07-27 · diff ↗

Show 28 earlier events

2.21.1
2020-07-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
2.19.3
2020-02-11 · diff ↗
2.19.2
2019-07-09 · diff ↗
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
2.18.2
2018-11-07 · diff ↗
2.18.1
2018-10-16 · diff ↗
2.17.4
2018-10-01 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
2.17.3
2018-01-20 · diff ↗
2.17.2
2017-12-21 · diff ↗
2.16.2
2017-07-03 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
2.15.1
2017-04-19 · diff ↗
2.14.2
2017-03-19 · diff ↗
2.14.1
2016-12-28 · diff ↗
2.13.2
2016-12-18 · diff ↗
2.12.1
2016-09-12 · diff ↗
2.11.1
2016-07-29 · diff ↗
2.10.1
2016-06-24 · diff ↗
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
2.9.0-3
2016-02-12 · diff ↗
2.9.0
2016-01-05 · diff ↗
2.8.2
2015-11-27 · diff ↗
2.8.1
2015-11-19 · diff ↗
2.8.0
2015-09-19 · diff ↗
2.7.0-1
2015-07-18
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16

Package metadata

First published: 2015-07-18
Total releases: 32 / 11 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 3.4.0
Download size: 1.5 MB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

Appears in task views

Bayesian Inference Mixed, Multilevel, and Hierarchical Models in R