Crates / salsa20 / Alternatives
Rust crate alternatives · data Oct 24, 2026
Alternatives to salsa20
Short answerThe closest alternatives to salsa20 on crates.io data are chacha20 (1.7M real downloads a day), ctr (757K real downloads a day), digest (3.9M real downloads a day). Of the 8 we list, the most used is digest, and 5 shipped a release in the last year. salsa20 itself gets 299,073 a day with 66 dependents.
Every alternative we found
| Alternative | Real downloads a day | vs salsa20 | Dependents | Last release | Why it is listed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| chacha20 Established | 1,737,072 | 5.81x | 260 | 58d | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto", keyword "stream-cipher" | compare |
| ctr Established | 757,345 | 2.53x | 344 | 5mo | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto", keyword "stream-cipher" | compare |
| digest Widely used | 3,862,411 | 12.91x | 1,197 | 6mo | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto" | compare |
| crypto-common Pulled in | 3,766,260 | 12.59x | 85 | 5mo | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto" | compare |
| ppv-lite86 Pulled in | 2,441,634 | 8.16x | 6 | 20mo | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto" | compare |
| subtle Widely used | 2,159,165 | 7.22x | 2,362 | 2.3y | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto" | compare |
| hmac Widely used | 2,124,794 | 7.10x | 4,359 | 7mo | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto" | compare |
| ring Widely used | 2,112,308 | 7.06x | 1,837 | 19mo | category Cryptography, category No standard library, keyword "crypto" | compare |
How to choose
- Same job, not the same API. Each line is listed because it shares a crates.io category or keyword with salsa20; read its description before you swap.
- More dependents means more answered questions and a smaller chance it disappears.
- Check the last release against how fast you need fixes. For salsa20: is it still maintained?
Rules
Alternatives = tracked crates (top 1000 by downloads) that share a specific crates.io category (2 points each) or keyword (3 points each) with salsa20, most similar first; its own parts (same name prefix) and crates it depends on or that depend on it are left out, because those are companions, not substitutes. Real downloads = quiet-day median, crates.io data Oct 24, 2026. Built when we find 3 or more.
Up next
The closest alternative: Established and gaining. 1,737,072 real downloads a day.chacha20Rust crate. The ChaCha20 stream cipher (RFC 8439) implemented in pure Rust using traits from the RustCrypto `cipher` crate, with optional architecture-specific hardware...Read it next →Also worth your time