rustls vs native-tls

Short answerPredictable builds: rustls. Platform behavior: native-tls. By steady daily use, rustls is bigger: 2,763,314 real downloads a day against 764,866 for native-tls (3.6x). 5,286 crates depend on rustls and 853 on native-tls. rustls last shipped 10 days ago, native-tls 8 months ago.

rustls

Widely used

Widely used and steady.

5,286 crates depend on it; downloads don't spike on releases.

Rustls is a modern TLS library written in Rust.

native-tls

Established

Established and steady.

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

A wrapper over a platform's native TLS implementation

rustlsnative-tls · 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	rustls	native-tls
Real downloads a day	2,763,314	764,866
Crates that depend on it	5,286	853
Last release	0.23.46, 10 days ago	0.2.18, 8 months ago
Trend vs the field	-3%	-9%
Release-window share	10.2%	0.0%
Downloads in the window	248,729,324	65,357,759
All-time downloads	1,037,219,339	366,018,040
Versions published	118	25
License	Apache-2.0 OR ISC OR MIT	MIT OR Apache-2.0
MSRV	1.71	1.80
First published	Aug 27, 2016	Nov 9, 2016

Which to pick

Pick rustls if you want the same TLS stack on every OS, statically linked.
Pick native-tls if you want the OS's own TLS (SChannel on Windows, Security.framework on macOS, OpenSSL on Linux) and its certificate store.
Bottom line: Predictable builds: rustls. Platform behavior: native-tls. (checked against each project's docs, Oct 24, 2026)
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 (rustls, 5,286 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
Check the release dates against your own pace: rustls 10 days ago, native-tls 8 months ago.

Also in this space

socket2Widely usedUtilities for handling networking sockets with a maximal amount of configuration possible intended4,034,112 a day, 1,539 dependents digestWidely usedTraits for cryptographic hash functions and message authentication codes3,862,411 a day, 1,197 dependents block-bufferPulled inBuffer types for block processing of data3,815,018 a day, 23 dependents crypto-commonPulled inCommon traits used by cryptographic algorithms3,766,260 a day, 85 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. People search for this pair: Google suggests "rustls vs native-tls".