explaingit

google-research/timesfm

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

19,755PythonAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

Pre-trained AI model from Google for forecasting time-series data without retraining. Feed it historical numbers, get future predictions with confidence ranges.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((TimesFM))
    What it does
      Forecasts time series
      No retraining needed
      Quantile predictions
    How to use
      Load pre-trained model
      Set forecast horizon
      Get predictions
    Tech stack
      Python
      PyTorch
      Flax
    Integrations
      BigQuery ML
      Google Sheets
      Vertex AI
    Use cases
      Sales forecasting
      Energy usage
      Traffic prediction
Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Forecast daily sales or revenue without training a custom model on your data.

USE CASE 2

Predict hourly electricity consumption and get confidence ranges for planning.

USE CASE 3

Estimate website traffic spikes with uncertainty bounds for capacity planning.

What is it built with?

PythonPyTorchFlax

How does it compare?

google-research/timesfmquantopian/ziplinecamel-ai/owl
Stars19,75519,76419,773
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultyeasymoderatemoderate
Complexity2/53/54/5
Audiencedeveloperdatadeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
Use freely for any purpose including commercial. Keep the notice and disclose changes to the patent grant.

In plain English

TimesFM (Time Series Foundation Model) is a pre-trained AI model developed by Google Research for forecasting time-series data. A time series is any sequence of measurements taken over time, sales figures by day, electricity usage by hour, website traffic by minute. Traditional forecasting models need to be trained from scratch on your own data. TimesFM works differently: it was pre-trained on a large amount of diverse time-series data by Google and can make accurate forecasts on new datasets without any additional training, similar to how a large language model can answer questions about topics it was not explicitly fine-tuned on. You provide the model with historical data points (the context), and it predicts future values (the horizon). The current version (TimesFM 2.5) uses 200 million parameters, supports context windows of up to 16,000 time steps, and can output not just a single point forecast but also a range of quantile predictions, meaning it can tell you both the most likely future value and a confidence range around it. The code example in the README shows loading the pre-trained model, configuring it with a forecast horizon of 12 steps, and feeding in two short numerical sequences to get back predicted values and uncertainty ranges. TimesFM is integrated into several Google products, including BigQuery ML for SQL-based forecasting at scale, Google Sheets for spreadsheet users, and Vertex AI for cloud deployment. It supports fine-tuning via LoRA for adapting the model to specific datasets. The library is written in Python and supports both PyTorch and Flax backends.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me how to load TimesFM and make a 12-step forecast on a simple sales dataset.
Prompt 2
How do I use TimesFM's quantile predictions to get both a best guess and a confidence range for my forecast?
Prompt 3
Can you help me fine-tune TimesFM with LoRA on my company's specific time-series data?
Prompt 4
How do I integrate TimesFM into a BigQuery ML pipeline for forecasting at scale?

Frequently asked questions

What is timesfm?

Pre-trained AI model from Google for forecasting time-series data without retraining. Feed it historical numbers, get future predictions with confidence ranges.

What language is timesfm written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, PyTorch, Flax.

What license does timesfm use?

Use freely for any purpose including commercial. Keep the notice and disclose changes to the patent grant.

How hard is timesfm to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is timesfm for?

Mainly developer.

Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

This repo across BitVibe Labs

Scan in gitsafehub Deploy in gitdeployhub google-research on gitmyhub

Verify against the repo before relying on details.