Crates / Compare / tokio-rustls vs rustls-native-certs
Rust crates side by side · data Oct 24, 2026
tokio-rustls vs rustls-native-certs
Short answerBy steady daily use, tokio-rustls is bigger: 2,299,591 real downloads a day against 1,774,553 for rustls-native-certs (1.3x). 2,458 crates depend on tokio-rustls and 761 on rustls-native-certs. tokio-rustls last shipped 26 days ago, rustls-native-certs 11 days ago.
tokio-rustls
Widely usedWidely used and steady.
2,458 crates depend on it; small bumps on release days (1.17x the baseline).
Asynchronous TLS/SSL streams for Tokio using Rustls.
rustls-native-certs
EstablishedEstablished and steady.
761 crates depend on it; downloads jump on release days (1.5x the baseline).
rustls-native-certs allows rustls to use the platform native certificate store
tokio-rustlsrustls-native-certs · 100% = that crate's normal quiet day, so a spike to 300% is triple its usual traffic
How they relate
- Often used together: 5 tracked crates depend on both (hyper-rustls, tonic, tokio-tungstenite, aws-smithy-http-client, redis). They are not always either/or.
Every number, side by side
| Same window, same method | tokio-rustls | rustls-native-certs |
|---|---|---|
| Real downloads a day | 2,299,591 | 1,774,553 |
| Crates that depend on it | 2,458 | 761 |
| Last release | 0.26.6, 26 days ago | 0.8.5, 11 days ago |
| Trend vs the field | +3% | -2% |
| Release-window share | 4.8% | 3.4% |
| Downloads in the window | 210,258,177 | 160,484,609 |
| All-time downloads | 871,391,107 | 627,756,254 |
| Versions published | 80 | 24 |
| License | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 OR ISC OR MIT |
| MSRV | 1.71 | 1.71 |
| First published | Feb 22, 2017 | Nov 4, 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 (tokio-rustls, 2,458 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
- Check the release dates against your own pace: tokio-rustls 26 days ago, rustls-native-certs 11 days 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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