🦀 crates.io Rust Package Scraper

🚀 Pull Rust crates with version, edition, downloads, dependencies, repo, categories, keywords, features, crate size, license. 34 fields.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-08 · 📊 34 fields per record · 150K+ Rust crates · version, edition, downloads, recent downloads, dependencies, repo, categories, keywords, features, crate size, license · search, browse, lookup

The crates.io Rust Package Scraper pulls rich crate metadata from the official Rust crates registry. Output includes crate ID + name, newest + max-stable + default versions, description, license, total + recent downloads, homepage, repository, documentation URL, structured + plain keywords, structured + plain categories, created / updated dates, yanked flag, exact-match flag (for search), and per-version metadata: edition (2015 / 2018 / 2021 / 2024), crate size, features, has-lib flag, bin names, version-level downloads.

Four modes in one Actor: free-text search, newest crates feed, most-downloaded, and recently-updated. Plus direct lookup by crate name. Lookup mode enriches each record with detailed keyword + category objects (with their own crate counts).

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Rust developers, security teams, SBOM builders, ecosystem analytics teams, ML datasets, package-discovery tools	Rust supply chain analysis, ecosystem health monitoring, crate-discovery tools, dependency-graph extraction, learning Rust

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📋 What the crates.io Rust Package Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🔍 Search. Free-text crates.io search.
• 📈 Newest / popular. Sort by new, by total downloads, by recent activity.
• 🆔 Lookup. Pull specific crates by name with full enrichment.
• ⚙️ Per-version metadata. Edition, crate size, features, bin names, has-lib flag.
• 🏷️ Categories + keywords. Both as plain arrays and as detailed objects with their own crate counts.

💡 Why it matters: clean, server-side filtering and fresh data on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan up to 1,000,000.
mode	string	"most_downloaded"	search, newest, most_downloaded, recently_updated, lookup.
query	string	""	Search term (search mode).
names	string	""	Newline-separated crate names (lookup mode).

Example: top 50 most-downloaded crates.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "mode": "most_downloaded"
}

Example: lookup specific crates.

{
    "maxItems": 10,
    "mode": "lookup",
    "names": "serde\ntokio\nclap\nrand\nrayon"
}

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📊 Output

Each record contains 34 fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
📛 name	string	"serde"
🏷️ newestVersion	string	"1.0.221"
🏷️ defaultVersion	string	"1.0.221"
📜 description	string	"A generic serialization/deserialization framework"
⚖️ license	string	"MIT OR Apache-2.0"
📊 downloads	number	452123456
📈 recentDownloads	number	75123456
🌐 repository	string	"https://github.com/serde-rs/serde"
📚 documentation	string	"https://docs.rs/serde"
🏷️ keywords	array	["serde","serialization","encoding"]
🏷️ categories	array	["encoding"]
📊 numVersions	number	415
⚙️ latestVersionEdition	string	"2018"
📏 latestVersionCrateSize	number	79213
⚙️ latestVersionFeatures	array	["default","derive","std","alloc","rc","serde_derive","unstable"]
📅 createdAt	string	"2014-12-05T20:48:30.530Z"
📅 updatedAt	string	"2026-04-12T14:33:21.000Z"
🌐 cratesIoUrl	string	"https://crates.io/crates/serde"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
⚙️	Edition included. Know whether a crate is on Rust 2015, 2018, 2021, or 2024.
📏	Crate size + features. Per-version unpacked size and full feature list.
🏷️	Detailed categories. Each category includes its own crate count, useful for ecosystem maps.
📈	Recent downloads. Last-90-days total alongside lifetime.
🆓	No API key. crates.io is open.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ This Actor	$5 free credit	150K+ crates	Live per run	5 modes	⚡ 2 min
crates.io API	Free	Same	Live	DIY	🐢 Code
lib.rs	Free	Same	Live	Limited	🐢 Browse
Manual scraping	Free	All	Live	DIY	🐢 Days

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Find the crates.io Rust Package Scraper on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick filters and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🦀 Rust Tooling Crate-discovery search engines Dependency dashboards SBOM for Rust projects License-compliance audits	📊 Ecosystem Analytics Most-downloaded leaderboards Edition-adoption studies Category-distribution maps Keyword-frequency analysis
🎓 Learning + Research Rust-curriculum sourcing Reproducible crate corpora Best-practice exploration Library-comparison studies	🤖 ML + Discovery Train crate-recommendation Crate-similarity embeddings Generate "alternatives to X" lists Documentation linking

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🔌 Automating crates.io Rust Package Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows.

🎓 Research and academia Rust-ecosystem studies OSS health datasets Reproducible crate snapshots Edition-evolution research	🎨 Personal and creative Personal favorite-crate dashboards Curated crate lists Side projects with registry data Library-blog backbones
🤝 Non-profit and civic Free SBOM tools Educational ecosystem maps Civic-tech Rust inventories Free open-source security awareness	🧪 Experimentation Train recommenders Prototype crate visualizers Build feature-flag explorers Test license-detection pipelines

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a mode (search, newest, most_downloaded, recently_updated, or lookup). The Actor pages through the crates.io API and emits one record per crate.

📊 How many fields per record?

34 base. Lookup mode adds detailed keyword and category objects.

⚙️ What does the edition field mean?

The Rust edition the crate was compiled against: 2015, 2018, 2021, or 2024.

📦 Are features listed?

Yes. Cargo features for the latest version are exposed as a string array.

📈 How accurate are downloads?

Pulled live from crates.io. The recentDownloads field is last-90-days.

🆓 Do I need an API key?

No. crates.io is open.

🔁 Can I schedule runs?

Yes. Schedule daily to track new releases and version bumps.

⚖️ Is this data free to use?

Yes. crates.io publishes metadata openly.

🚨 Are yanked crates included?

Yes. The yanked flag is preserved.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan covers preview runs (10 records).

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🔌 Integrate with any app

crates.io Rust Package Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications
• Airbyte - Pipe data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits
• Google Drive - Export datasets to Sheets

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Rust Foundation, the crates.io maintainers, or any individual crate author. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.