crates.io Package Version Delta Monitor

Watch public crates.io crates for new versions via the official HTTP API (crates.io/api/v1/crates/{crate}). Only deltas since the last run are written to the dataset — ideal for Rust dependency monitoring, SBOM/ops agents, and scheduled changelogs.

Pricing (pay per event): $0.001 per version-delta (each newly detected crate version). Actor start is a small platform event (~$0.00005). First run baselines quietly (0 dataset items / 0 delta charges) so you are not billed for history.

Status: Publishing to Apify Store under standing auth (B). Real exampleRunInput (serde/tokio/clap — not helloWorld); dataset uses crate_description (not reserved description/title); silent-baseline tests green.

Why use this

• API-only — official crates.io JSON (no HTML scraping)
• Delta-only — subsequent runs emit new versions only
• First-run safe — empty state seeds LAST_SEEN with zero PPE delta charges
• No auth required for public crates
• Schedule-friendly — pair with an Apify schedule for continuous monitoring
• Semver prereleases + yanked filterable

Input

Field	Required	Description
crates	yes	List of crates.io crate names
sinceVersion	no	On first run for a crate, treat this version and older (by created_at) as already seen
includePrereleases	no	Include semver prereleases (default true)
includeYanked	no	Include yanked versions (default false)
resetState	no	Clear LAST_SEEN and re-baseline (0 emits that run)

Example / exampleRunInput (not helloWorld)

Canonical: ./INPUT.example.json (= .actor/example_run_input.json).

{
  "crates": ["serde", "tokio", "clap"],
  "includePrereleases": true,
  "includeYanked": false,
  "resetState": false
}

Output

Each dataset item is a newly detected version, for example:

• crate, version, published_at, crate_description, is_prerelease, is_yanked, is_latest, registry_url, download_url

First-run behavior

Situation	Dataset items	version-delta charges
Empty state, no sinceVersion	0	0 (baseline only)
Empty state + sinceVersion	Only newer than that version	1 per item
Later runs	New version strings only	1 per item

Tips

1. Run once to baseline, then attach a schedule (e.g. hourly/daily).
2. Keep crate lists focused — Actor sleeps ~1s between crates to respect crates.io ≤1 RPS guidance.
3. Set a clear User-Agent (this Actor does) and a user max total charge on the run.

ToS / scope

Uses the public crates.io HTTP API only. See ./AGREEMENT.md and https://crates.io/data-access.

Store / Console

• Store: https://apify.com/collinjreynolds/crates-io-version-delta-monitor
• Console: https://console.apify.com/actors/ (see LEDGER for Actor ID)
• Hygiene: PPE version-delta $0.001; LIMITED_PERMISSIONS; DEVELOPER_TOOLS/AI; memory 512; timeout 300; identifying User-Agent + ≤1 RPS; first-run silent baseline (0 deltas).