FYI - PyPI Changed Download Counting Algorithm

[Robert_Claus]

Just a heads up for the community since this affects many other projects in the Python ecosystem.

On August 24th PyPI released a change to it’s download counting algorithm to exclude .metadata file downloads. So some commands like pip show were counted before the change, but not after the change. That means the default daily download metric for almost every package on PyPI on pypistats.org abruptly dropped by 20-40%.

This wasn’t a change in actual usage.

Here are the Dash downloads showing that the actual package downloads are stable and the drop in total downloads was purely from the .metadata files no longer being counted.

[william.williamkane7]

Good catch. I noticed the same kind of drop and initially thought it meant package usage had fallen. The PyPI change makes it clear that the numbers were affected by how downloads were counted, not by a real drop in users. It’s worth keeping this in mind when comparing stats before and after August 24.