diff --git a/src/booster.jl b/src/booster.jl
index bebb054..2769b89 100644
--- a/src/booster.jl
+++ b/src/booster.jl
@@ -366,7 +366,6 @@ function updateone!(b::Booster, Xy::DMatrix;
                     update_feature_names::Bool=false,
                    )
     xgbcall(XGBoosterUpdateOneIter, b.handle, round_number, Xy.handle)
-    isempty(watchlist) || logeval(b, watchlist, round_number)
     _maybe_update_feature_names!(b, Xy, update_feature_names)
     b
 end
@@ -422,10 +421,44 @@ Run `num_round` rounds of gradient boosting on [`Booster`](@ref) `b`.
 The first and second derivatives of the loss function (`ℓ′` and `ℓ″` respectively) can be provided
 for custom loss.
 """
-function update!(b::Booster, data, a...; num_round::Integer=1, kw...)
+function update!(b::Booster, data, a...;
+                 num_round::Integer=1, 
+                 watchlist=Dict("train"=>Xy), 
+                 early_stopping_rounds::Integer=0,
+                 maximize=false,
+                 kw...,
+                 )
+
+    if !isempty(watchlist) && early_stopping_rounds > 0
+        early_stopping_set = collect(Iterators.map(string, keys(watchlist)))[end]
+        println("Will train until there has been no improvement in $early_stopping_rounds rounds.\n")
+        best_round = 0
+        best_score = maximize ? -Inf : Inf
+    end 
+
     for j ∈ 1:num_round
         round_number = getnrounds(b) + 1
         updateone!(b, data, a...; round_number, kw...)
+        if !isempty(watchlist) 
+            msg = evaliter(b, watchlist, j)
+            @info(msg)
+            if early_stopping_rounds > 0
+                split_msg = split(msg, r"\s+|:")
+                metric_name_idx = findfirst(occursin.(early_stopping_set, split_msg))
+                score = parse(Float64, split_msg[metric_name_idx + 1])
+
+                if (maximize && score > best_score || (!maximize && score < best_score))
+                    best_score = score
+                    best_round = j
+                elseif j - best_round >= early_stopping_rounds
+                    watchlist_metric = (split_msg[metric_name_idx])
+                    @info(
+                        "Xgboost: Stopping. \n\tBest iteration: $best_round. \n\t$(watchlist_metric) has not improved in $early_stopping_rounds rounds."
+                    )
+                return (b)
+                end
+            end
+        end
     end
     b
 end
@@ -441,6 +474,13 @@ followed by [`update!`](@ref) for `nrounds`.
 `watchlist` is a dict the keys of which are strings giving the name of the data to watch
 and the values of which are [`DMatrix`](@ref) objects containing the data.
 
+`early_stopping_rounds` if 0, the early stopping function is not triggered. If set to a positive integer, 
+training with a validation set will stop if the performance doesn't improve for k rounds.
+
+`maximize` If early_stopping_rounds is set, then this parameter must be set as well.
+When it is false, it means the smaller the evaluation score the better. When set to true,
+the larger the evaluation score the better.
+
 All other keyword arguments are passed to [`Booster`](@ref).  With few exceptions these are model
 training hyper-parameters, see [here](https://xgboost.readthedocs.io/en/stable/parameter.html) for
 a comprehensive list.
@@ -460,12 +500,14 @@ ŷ = predict(b, X)
 function xgboost(dm::DMatrix, a...;
                  num_round::Integer=10,
                  watchlist=Dict("train"=>dm),
+                 early_stopping_rounds::Integer=0,
+                 maximize=false,
                  kw...
                 )
     Xy = DMatrix(dm)
     b = Booster(Xy; kw...)
     isempty(watchlist) || @info("XGBoost: starting training.")
-    update!(b, Xy, a...; num_round, watchlist)
+    update!(b, Xy, a...; num_round, watchlist, early_stopping_rounds, maximize)
     isempty(watchlist) || @info("Training rounds complete.")
     b
 end
diff --git a/test/runtests.jl b/test/runtests.jl
index cade6d5..39dd5cf 100644
--- a/test/runtests.jl
+++ b/test/runtests.jl
@@ -130,6 +130,41 @@ end
     end
 end
 
+
+@testset "Early Stopping rounds" begin
+
+    dtrain = XGBoost.load(DMatrix, testfilepath("agaricus.txt.train"), format=:libsvm)
+    dtest = XGBoost.load(DMatrix, testfilepath("agaricus.txt.test"), format=:libsvm)
+    watchlist = Dict("eval"=>dtest, "train"=>dtrain)
+    
+    bst = xgboost(dtrain, 
+        num_round=30,
+        watchlist=watchlist,
+        η=1,
+        objective="binary:logistic",
+        eval_metric=["rmsle","rmse"]
+        )
+
+    bst_early_stopping = xgboost(dtrain,
+        num_round=30,
+        watchlist=watchlist,
+        η=1,
+        objective="binary:logistic",
+        eval_metric=["rmsle","rmse"],
+        early_stopping_rounds = 2
+        )
+
+        nrounds_bst = XGBoost.getnrounds(bst) 
+        nrounds_bst_early_stopping = XGBoost.getnrounds(bst_early_stopping) 
+        # Check to see that running with early stopping results in less rounds
+        @test nrounds_bst_early_stopping < nrounds_bst
+
+        # Check number of rounds > early stopping rounds
+        @test nrounds_bst_early_stopping > 2
+end
+
+
+
 @testset "Blobs training" begin
     (X, y) = load_classification()