JASP is free, open source, and deservedly popular: it made point-and-click Bayesian analysis something any researcher can run. This page is not an argument against it. It is about the cases where you need a wide frequentist toolkit and a manuscript-ready output next to it — and it says plainly where JASP remains the better tool.
JASP is free and open source, and its Bayesian analyses are its signature. Bayes factors for t-tests, ANOVA, regression and contingency tables, posterior estimation and prior handling — all available from menus, with documentation and a textbook to match. If Bayesian statistics behind a point-and-click interface is what you need, JASP covers it more completely than Magic Stat does.
Magic Stat also has Bayesian tools — a JZS Bayes factor for the t-test, a Bayes factor for correlation, an approximate factor for one-way ANOVA, and posterior summaries with HDI and ROPE — but they are computed by direct sampling of conjugate models, not by MCMC. There is no Stan or PyMC underneath. That is a real difference, and for serious Bayesian modelling JASP (or R) is the more capable choice.
Where Magic Stat aims to be useful is the rest of the paper: a broad frequentist toolkit across ecology, econometrics, psychometrics and the medical sciences, all in one application, with the APA table and the report coming out of the same run.
Bayesian in Magic Stat: JZS Bayes factor for the t-test (one sample, paired, two groups); a Bayes factor for correlation; an approximate Bayes factor (BIC) for one-way ANOVA with pairwise Bayesian comparisons; and posterior estimates with HDI, ROPE and direction probability, from direct sampling of conjugate models.
Honest limit: no MCMC sampler — no hierarchical Bayesian models, no custom priors beyond the built-in ones. For those, JASP and R (with Stan, brms or rstanarm) are the right tools.
Everything else in the app is frequentist, and that is the bulk of it — from t-tests to SEM.
Yes — free and open source. If it fits your work, use it; this page is not a reason to leave it.
Yes, but a narrower set: Bayes factors and posterior summaries without an MCMC sampler. JASP's Bayesian module is deeper and better documented, and for hierarchical models it is the better choice.
For the frequentist breadth and the manuscript workflow: methods from ecology, econometrics, psychometrics and medicine in one application, with APA tables and an automatic report.
No. Magic Stat is a commercial application — a free 48-hour trial with no card, then US$990 per year.
No. The analysis runs locally; the only automatic signal is an anonymous installation counter with no data in it.