Crates / Compare / url vs urlencoding
Rust crates side by side · data Oct 24, 2026
url vs urlencoding
Short answerBy steady daily use, url is bigger: 2,520,673 real downloads a day against 826,249 for urlencoding (3.1x). 16,906 crates depend on url and 2,751 on urlencoding. url last shipped 10 months ago, urlencoding 3.3 years ago.
url
FoundationalFoundational and steady.
16,906 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.
URL library for Rust, based on the WHATWG URL Standard
urlencoding
Widely usedWidely used and quiet for years.
2,751 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.
A Rust library for doing URL percentage encoding.
urlurlencoding · 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 | url | urlencoding |
|---|---|---|
| Real downloads a day | 2,520,673 | 826,249 |
| Crates that depend on it | 16,906 | 2,751 |
| Last release | 2.5.8, 10 months ago | 2.1.3, 3.3 years ago |
| Trend vs the field | -2% | +0% |
| Release-window share | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Downloads in the window | 227,266,461 | 72,479,365 |
| All-time downloads | 986,357,342 | 300,615,925 |
| Versions published | 89 | 16 |
| License | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| MSRV | 1.63 | not set |
| First published | Nov 14, 2014 | Sep 15, 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 (url, 16,906 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
- Check the release dates against your own pace: url 10 months ago, urlencoding 3.3 years 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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