Crates / Compare / tokio vs futures
Rust crates side by side · data Oct 24, 2026
tokio vs futures
Short answerBy steady daily use, tokio is bigger: 3,098,313 real downloads a day against 2,405,900 for futures (1.3x). 78,796 crates depend on tokio and 26,505 on futures. tokio last shipped 3 days ago, futures 2 months ago.
tokio
FoundationalFoundational and steady.
78,796 crates depend on it; downloads jump on release days (1.4x the baseline).
An event-driven, non-blocking I/O platform for writing asynchronous I/O backed applications.
futures
FoundationalFoundational and steady.
26,505 crates depend on it; downloads don't spike on releases.
An implementation of futures and streams featuring zero allocations, composability, and iterator-like interfaces.
tokiofutures · 100% = that crate's normal quiet day, so a spike to 300% is triple its usual traffic
How they relate
- Often used together: 3 tracked crates depend on both (criterion, wiremock, tracing-futures). They are not always either/or.
Every number, side by side
| Same window, same method | tokio | futures |
|---|---|---|
| Real downloads a day | 3,098,313 | 2,405,900 |
| Crates that depend on it | 78,796 | 26,505 |
| Last release | 1.54.1, 3 days ago | 0.3.34, 2 months ago |
| Trend vs the field | -8% | -9% |
| Release-window share | 11.6% | 2.4% |
| Downloads in the window | 272,815,137 | 200,567,603 |
| All-time downloads | 1,101,468,563 | 879,796,181 |
| Versions published | 201 | 75 |
| License | MIT | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| MSRV | 1.85 | 1.71 |
| First published | Jul 1, 2016 | Jul 31, 2016 |
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, 78,796 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
- Check the release dates against your own pace: tokio 3 days ago, futures 2 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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