hashbrown vs infer

Short answerBy steady daily use, hashbrown is bigger: 8,927,960 real downloads a day against 355,199 for infer (25.1x). 2,468 crates depend on hashbrown and 362 on infer. hashbrown last shipped 6 months ago, infer 3 months ago.

hashbrown

Widely used

Widely used and steady.

2,468 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.

A Rust port of Google's SwissTable hash map

infer

Established

Established and steady.

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

Small crate to infer file type based on magic number signatures

hashbrowninfer · 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	hashbrown	infer
Real downloads a day	8,927,960	355,199
Crates that depend on it	2,468	362
Last release	0.17.1, 6 months ago	0.22.0, 3 months ago
Trend vs the field	-4%	+7%
Release-window share	0.0%	0.0%
Downloads in the window	793,966,067	32,695,240
All-time downloads	2,826,725,908	136,440,656
Versions published	56	38
License	MIT OR Apache-2.0	MIT
MSRV	1.85.0	1.74
First published	Oct 29, 2018	Feb 23, 2019

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 (hashbrown, 2,468 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
Check the release dates against your own pace: hashbrown 6 months ago, infer 3 months ago.

Also in this space

ahashWidely usedA non-cryptographic hash function using AES-NI for high performance1,968,676 a day, 2,097 dependents nohash-hasherEstablishedAn implementation of `std::hash::Hasher` which does not hash at all324,114 a day, 224 dependents smallvecWidely used'Small vector' optimization: store up to a small number of items on the stack3,868,589 a day, 4,345 dependents eitherWidely usedThe enum `Either` with variants `Left` and `Right` is a general purpose sum type with two cases3,049,603 a day, 1,488 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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