Stan is a probabilistic programming language for specifying statistical models. Stan provides full Bayesian inference for continuous-variable models through Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods such as the No-U-Turn sampler, an adaptive form of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampling. Penalized maximum likelihood estimates are calculated using optimization methods such as the limited memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno algorithm. Stan can be called through R using the rstan package, and through Python using the pystan package.