# Ecosystem adoption

> How inspect.software measures real package adoption — registry downloads and dependents across npm, PyPI, Packagist, and more. 4.5% of the overall index.


**Ecosystem adoption** measures how widely a package is actually installed,
using the package registries themselves — npm, PyPI, Packagist, crates.io,
RubyGems, Hex, and the other [supported ecosystems](/wiki/supported-ecosystems).
Real download volume beats GitHub stars as adoption evidence: downloads
measure use, stars measure attention.

- **Category:** [Community & Adoption](/wiki/community-adoption) (25% within category)
- **Weight in overall index:** 4.5%
- **Metric key:** `ecosystem_adoption`
- **Applies to:** repositories that publish at least one package; otherwise `null`

## How the value is computed

| Component | Weight | Criteria |
| --------- | ------ | -------- |
| Monthly downloads | 80 | summed across the repository's packages, log-scaled — ~1,000,000/month saturates |
| Total downloads | 80 | fallback when a registry publishes no monthly figure (e.g. RubyGems); log-scaled, ~50,000,000 all-time saturates |
| Registry dependents | 20 | log-scaled; reported by some ecosystems only, excluded elsewhere |

The download component uses the monthly figure where available and the
lifetime total otherwise — whichever the registry provides, so no ecosystem
is structurally disadvantaged.

## Fairness rules

- **Non-publishing repositories are not penalized.** Applications and
  infrastructure projects that ship nothing to a registry get `null` here,
  and [Community & Adoption](/wiki/community-adoption) renormalizes onto its
  other metrics.
- **Packages must point back.** A registry package only counts when its
  metadata verifiably references the inspected repository; mismatched
  packages are listed in the report but excluded from the computation.
- **Log scaling** keeps the metric meaningful across the whole range — a
  package going from 1,000 to 10,000 monthly downloads moves as much as one
  going from 100,000 to 1,000,000.

## Reading the result

- Within its category, this is the strongest adoption evidence available —
  stronger than [popularity](/wiki/popularity), which is why a heavily
  downloaded but modestly starred package can outread a famous one.
- Download figures vary by registry in meaning (mirrors, CI traffic); the log
  scale absorbs most of that noise, and the exact inputs are echoed in every
  report for inspection.

## Improving the value

- Publish the package to its ecosystem's registry and keep the repository
  link in the package metadata accurate.
- Beyond that, downloads follow genuine use — the honest lever is the
  project's usefulness and discoverability, not the metric.

Related: [package maintenance](/wiki/package-maintenance) ·
[supported ecosystems](/wiki/supported-ecosystems)