Crates / Category
Rust crates · category · data Oct 24, 2026
Encoding crates by real downloads
crates.io describes this category as: “Encoding and/or decoding data from one data format to another.” Below are the 25 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, base64 leads Encoding with 4,638,981 real downloads a day (foundational and gaining). 14 of the 25 have 1,000+ dependents; 4 have shipped nothing in 2+ years. Release spikes barely matter here: the median crate got 1.5% of its downloads within 2 days of a release.
25 crates
| Compare | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| base64Foundational | 4,638,981 | 19,537 | 3mo | +19% | 1.8B | |
| serdeFoundational | 4,327,945 | 133,588 | 3mo | -5% | 1.6B | |
| serde_jsonFoundational | 4,294,696 | 113,141 | 13d | -5% | 1.5B | |
| serde_coreEstablished | 3,794,333 | 229 | 3mo | -1% | 74M | |
| zerocopyEstablished | 3,245,504 | 878 | 11d | -5% | 1B | |
| toml_datetimePulled in | 3,215,444 | 29 | 16d | +0% | 936M | |
| tomlFoundational | 2,960,881 | 20,777 | 15d | +2% | 1B | |
| toml_editWidely used | 2,715,071 | 1,989 | 15d | +1% | 941M | |
| urlFoundational | 2,520,673 | 16,906 | 10mo | +0% | 986M | |
| schemarsWidely used | 2,383,996 | 6,659 | 12d | +5% | 575M | |
| serde_spannedPulled in | 2,255,941 | 16 | 16d | +2% | 678M | |
| utf8_iterPulled in | 2,136,300 | 12 | 2.9y | +4% | 605M | |
| const-oidEstablished | 2,079,241 | 160 | 10mo | +13% | 56M | |
| byteorderWidely used | 2,056,746 | 4,780 | 3.0y | -2% | 894M | |
| hexFoundational | 1,974,541 | 14,719 | 5.6y | +3% | 739M | |
| prostWidely used | 1,867,529 | 5,082 | 5mo | -8% | 659M | |
| serde_urlencodedWidely used | 1,715,895 | 1,342 | 4.8y | +6% | 64M | |
| quick-xmlWidely used | 1,525,182 | 2,687 | 2mo | +10% | 493M | |
| derEstablished | 1,514,408 | 378 | 49d | +6% | 528M | |
| halfWidely used | 1,416,928 | 1,633 | 12mo | +5% | 524M | |
| data-encodingEstablished | 1,416,151 | 854 | 3mo | +9% | 48M | |
| encoding_rsWidely used | 1,414,714 | 1,424 | 30d | +8% | 594M | |
| spkiEstablished | 1,302,398 | 198 | 19d | +6% | 482M | |
| bstrEstablished | 1,252,630 | 676 | 2mo | +4% | 472M | |
| unicode-bidiEstablished | 1,058,529 | 190 | 22mo | +5% | 55M |
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