Crates / Compare / serde vs prost
Rust crates side by side · data Oct 24, 2026
serde vs prost
Short answerBy steady daily use, serde is bigger: 4,327,945 real downloads a day against 1,867,529 for prost (2.3x). 133,588 crates depend on serde and 5,082 on prost. serde last shipped 3 months ago, prost 5 months ago.
serde
FoundationalFoundational and steady.
133,588 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.
A generic serialization/deserialization framework
prost
Widely usedWidely used and steady.
5,082 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.
A Protocol Buffers implementation for the Rust Language.
serdeprost · 100% = that crate's normal quiet day, so a spike to 300% is triple its usual traffic
How they relate
- Often used together: 2 tracked crates depend on both (opentelemetry-proto, prost-reflect). They are not always either/or.
Every number, side by side
| Same window, same method | serde | prost |
|---|---|---|
| Real downloads a day | 4,327,945 | 1,867,529 |
| Crates that depend on it | 133,588 | 5,082 |
| Last release | 1.0.229, 3 months ago | 0.14.4, 5 months ago |
| Trend vs the field | -6% | -10% |
| Release-window share | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Downloads in the window | 381,040,518 | 155,247,812 |
| All-time downloads | 1,580,389,068 | 659,473,488 |
| Versions published | 316 | 46 |
| License | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| MSRV | 1.56 | 1.85 |
| First published | Dec 5, 2014 | Jun 25, 2017 |
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 (serde, 133,588 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
- Check the release dates against your own pace: serde 3 months ago, prost 5 months ago.
Also in this space
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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