crates.io Scraper

Scrape Rust packages ("crates") from the official crates.io API — by keyword, by sort, or by category. Get downloads, recent downloads, versions, repository, homepage, documentation, and dates. No API key or setup needed.

Search a topic, list the most-downloaded crates, or pull everything in a category, and export a clean, structured dataset to CSV, Excel, or JSON — great for package research, dependency monitoring, and Rust ecosystem analysis.

Features

• Official source — reads the public crates.io API.
• Flexible discovery — search by keyword, or leave the query empty to list top crates by your chosen sort.
• Powerful sorting — all-time downloads, recent downloads, recently updated, newest, or alphabetical.
• Category filter — narrow to any crates.io category slug (e.g. web-programming, command-line-utilities).

Use cases

• Package research — find the most popular crates for a topic or category.
• Dependency monitoring — schedule it to track versions and download growth of crates you depend on.
• Ecosystem analysis — build datasets of the Rust ecosystem for trend analysis or LLM pipelines.
• Discovery — surface newest or recently updated crates in a niche.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchQueries	string[]	Crate search terms. Leave empty to list top crates by sort.
sortBy	enum	downloads, recent-downloads, recent-updates, newest, or alphabetical.
category	string	Optional crates.io category slug (e.g. web-programming).
maxItems	integer	Max crates per query. Default 100.

Example

{
  "searchQueries": ["async", "http client"],
  "sortBy": "downloads",
  "category": "web-programming",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output

{
  "name": "tokio",
  "description": "An event-driven, non-blocking I/O platform for writing asynchronous I/O backed applications.",
  "downloads": 300000000,
  "recentDownloads": 40000000,
  "maxVersion": "1.40.0",
  "newestVersion": "1.40.0",
  "homepage": "https://tokio.rs",
  "repository": "https://github.com/tokio-rs/tokio",
  "documentation": "https://docs.rs/tokio",
  "createdAt": "2016-09-09T20:00:00Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-08-01T10:00:00Z",
  "url": "https://crates.io/crates/tokio",
  "query": "async",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-11T19:00:00.000Z"
}

Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.01 per run start (per GB of run memory) plus $0.50 per 1,000 crates. You only pay for crates actually returned. See the Pricing tab for current rates.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. This Actor uses the public crates.io API — no key, no auth. It sends a descriptive User-Agent, as crates.io requests.

How do I list the most-downloaded crates? Leave searchQueries empty and set sortBy to downloads.

Can I filter by category? Yes — set category to a crates.io category slug like command-line-utilities or asynchronous.

Can I monitor a crate's version and downloads? Yes — schedule the Actor with the crate name as the query and read maxVersion, downloads, and updatedAt.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial Actor. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by crates.io or the Rust Foundation. It uses the public crates.io API and returns publicly available content. You are responsible for how you use the data.