Crates / Category
Rust crates · category · data Oct 24, 2026
Command-line interface crates by real downloads
crates.io describes this category as: “Crates to help create command line interfaces, such as argument parsers, line-editing, or output coloring and formatting.” Below are the 11 crates in it among the 300 most-downloaded crates, ranked by real downloads (quiet-day baseline) instead of raw count.
Short answerBy steady daily use, shlex leads Command-line interface with 3,284,146 real downloads a day (established and steady). 2 of the 11 have 1,000+ dependents; 0 have shipped nothing in 2+ years. Release spikes barely matter here: the median crate got 0.0% of its downloads within 2 days of a release.
11 crates
| Compare | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| shlexEstablished | 3,284,146 | 754 | 5mo | +5% | 98M | |
| clapFoundational | 3,139,218 | 49,450 | 40d | -11% | 1.3B | |
| clap_builderPulled in | 2,755,258 | 26 | 40d | -7% | 862M | |
| clap_lexPulled in | 2,652,105 | 35 | 40d | -5% | 986M | |
| anstyleEstablished | 2,632,269 | 607 | 7mo | -6% | 845M | |
| clap_deriveEstablished | 2,491,922 | 136 | 40d | -10% | 859M | |
| anstreamEstablished | 2,459,829 | 428 | 8mo | -7% | 781M | |
| anstyle-parsePulled in | 2,444,259 | 27 | 8mo | -7% | 766M | |
| colorchoicePulled in | 2,364,472 | 14 | 7mo | -8% | 747M | |
| anstyle-queryPulled in | 2,326,326 | 26 | 11mo | -7% | 746M | |
| unicode-widthWidely used | 2,194,046 | 3,230 | 13mo | -2% | 901M |
Click a column to sort; press + to add a crate to a comparison. Real / day = median downloads on days with no release that day or the day before. Each crate's page shows its verdict and the 4 rules behind it. Why this method · this category on crates.io