byteorder vs bstr

Short answerBy steady daily use, byteorder is bigger: 2,056,746 real downloads a day against 1,252,630 for bstr (1.6x). 4,780 crates depend on byteorder and 676 on bstr. byteorder last shipped 3.0 years ago, bstr 2 months ago.

byteorder

Widely used

Widely used and quiet for years.

4,780 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.

Library for reading/writing numbers in big-endian and little-endian.

bstr

Established

Established and steady.

676 crates depend on it; downloads don't spike on releases.

A string type that is not required to be valid UTF-8.

byteorderbstr · 100% = that crate's normal quiet day, so a spike to 300% is triple its usual traffic

Every number, side by side

Same window, same method	byteorder	bstr
Real downloads a day	2,056,746	1,252,630
Crates that depend on it	4,780	676
Last release	1.5.0, 3.0 years ago	1.13.1, 2 months ago
Trend vs the field	-3%	+2%
Release-window share	0.0%	2.1%
Downloads in the window	186,126,203	111,929,713
All-time downloads	894,296,027	471,857,567
Versions published	58	53
License	Unlicense OR MIT	MIT OR Apache-2.0
MSRV	1.60	1.65
First published	Feb 3, 2015	Oct 9, 2018

Which to pick

Downloads tell you what is common, not what fits. Each crate's own description above says what it is for; when the jobs differ, pick by the job.
When both fit, prefer the one more crates depend on (byteorder, 4,780 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
Check the release dates against your own pace: byteorder 3.0 years ago, bstr 2 months ago.

Also in this space

bincodeWidely usedA binary serialization / deserialization strategy for transforming structs into bytes and vice versa!828,247 a day, 5,913 dependentsrendPulled inCross-platform, endian-aware primitives for Rust507,412 a day, 11 dependents endian-typePulled inType safe wrappers for types with a defined byte order255,797 a day, 2 dependents zerocopyEstablishedZerocopy makes zero-cost memory manipulation effortless. We write "unsafe" so you don't have to3,245,504 a day, 878 dependents

Compare 4 of them side by side →

Method

Real downloads = the median day with no release that day or the day before, from the crates.io API (Jul 27, 2026 to Oct 23, 2026). Raw crates.io counts include CI and bots and run high (why); the method is from our 90-day study.

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