hnsw
Library Listed Dormant
Fast approximate nearest neighbors
- Downloads
- 15,542
- Dependents
- 13
- Stars
- 268
- Forks
- 22
- Contributors
- 6
- Commits
- 157
- Latest release
- 0.11.0 ·
About
Hierarchical Navigable Small World Graph for fast ANN search
Enable the serde feature to serialize and deserialize HNSW.
Tips
A good default for M and M0 parameters is 12 and 24 respectively. According to the paper, M0 should always be double M, but you can change both of them freely.
Example
To see how this might be used with hamming space, see tests/simple_discrete.rs. To see how this might be used with euclidean space, see tests/simple.rs.
Note that the euclidean implementation in the test may have some numerical errors and fail to implement the triangle inequality, especially on high dimensionality. Use a Kahan sum instead for proper usage. It also may not utilize SIMD, but using an array may help with that.
Please refer to the space documentation for the trait and types regarding distance. It also contains special Bits128 - Bits4096 tuple structs that wrap an array of bytes and enable SIMD capability. Benchmarks provided use these SIMD impls.
Benchmarks
Here is a recall graph that you can compare to its alternatives:
For more benchmarks and how to benchmark, see benchmarks.md.
Read the full README
Implementation
This is based on the paper "Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs" by Yu. A. Malkov and D. A. Yashunin. This paper builds on the original paper for NSW. There are multiple papers written by the authors on NSW, which preceeded HNSW.
For more details about parameters and details of the implementation, see implementation.md.
Credit
This is in no way a direct copy or reimplementation of the original implementation. This was made purely based on the paper without reference to the original headers. The paper is very well written and easy to understand, with some minor exceptions. Thank you to the authors for your valuable contribution.
Questions? Contributions? Excited?
Please visit the Rust CV Discord.
Compatibility
- Runs on
- GPU support unknown
What shows it
- no dependency or feature matches a backend row
- Native code
- None found
- No native code found
- Python bindings
- No Python binding crate found
- License
- MIT
Compare with similar projects
Order: strongest tier first, then most downloads, then name, with unmeasured values last. A library counts downloads over 30 days. An app counts binary downloads per release. An app with none counts its crate downloads over 30 days. ML Rust runs this catalogue, so its closest project always gets a row.
| Project | Downloads | Dependents | Stars | Latest release | Runs on (GPU) | Native code | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Fast approximate nearest neighbors |
15,542 downloads over 30 days | 13 | 268 | 0.11.0 | GPU support unknown | No native code found | MIT |
|
kdtree-rs Featured
K-dimensional tree in Rust for fast geospatial indexing and nearest neighbors lookup |
388,481 downloads over 30 days | 29 | 286 | 0.8.1 | GPU support unknown | No native code found | Apache-2.0 OR MIT |
|
arroy Listed
Annoy-inspired Approximate Nearest Neighbors in Rust, based on LMDB and optimized for memory usage |
22,053 downloads over 30 days | 6 | 314 | 0.9.0 | GPU support unknown | Binds native code: lmdb-master-sys | MIT |
|
splintr Listed
Tokenizer for Rust and Python: pure Rust by default, with 18 bundled vocabularies and four backends covering BPE, SentencePiece and WordPiece. Its output matches Hugging Face tokenizers id for id on 14 model families, including GPT-2, Qwen, Whisper, T5 and BERT. Python bindings |
8,204 downloads over 30 days | 7 | 63 | 0.22.2 | GPU support unknown | Binds native code: pcre2-sys (feature pcre2) | MIT |
|
Vantage Point Tree search algorithm for fast nearest neighbour search in multi-dimensional metric spaces. |
919 downloads over 30 days | 2 | 32 | 2.1.0 | GPU support unknown | No native code found | BSD-2-Clause |
|
Graph-based Retrieval of Approximate Nearest Neighbors |
34 downloads over 30 days | 0 | 319 | 0.5.2 | GPU support unknown | Binds native code: blas, blas-sys (feature blas) | MIT |
|
instant-distance Archived
Fast minimal implementation of HNSW maps for approximate nearest neighbors searches |
96,520 downloads over 30 days | 36 | 343 | 0.6.1 | GPU support unknown | No native code found | Apache-2.0 OR MIT |
Why ListedNo archive, New or Featured rule places it, so it is Listed.
What it lacks for Featured
- It has 7 active dependents and 6 new dependents in 365 days. Featured needs 11 active dependents or 9 new dependents in 365 days. The repository route reads 268 stars, 22 forks and 6 contributors. It needs 4,539 stars, 434 forks and 79 contributors together.
- The project is dormant and not finished. Dormancy rule
What else the check found
- The last activity is on 4 Aug 2025, 462 days ago. That reaches the 365 days the rules expect, so the project is dormant. Dormancy rule
- The oldest outside issue waits 1671 days for a reply, past the limit of 270. No maintainer replied in 365 days. Rot signals rule
Not measured: Latest release fails cargo check.
Exact rules: Listed, Featured library. The check on applied thresholds version 9.
Every rule outcome, as the check records it
expected-interval: version 0.11.0 base 140, raised to the 365-day floor: E = 365 daysdormancy: last activity 2025-08-04, 462 days ago, E = 365: dormantrot: oldest unanswered issue 1671 days (limit 270), no maintainer reply in 365 daysfeatured: not featured: active_users 7 < 11 and new_adopters 6 < 9 and repository route stars 268 (needs 4539), forks 22 (needs 434), contributors 6 (needs 79); dormant and not stablelisted: listed: no archive, new or featured rule applies
Measurements and sources
Each signal row shows the raw value, its source and the fetch date. The Sources list gathers every distinct source on this page. Movement needs more history.
Sources6 sources
- Description: the crates.io description
- crates.io database dump, fetched
- RustSec advisory database, fetched
- GitHub repository, fetched
- crates.io package, fetched
- GitHub contributors, fetched
Adoption7 active dependents, 6 new dependents in 365 days1 not measured
| Signal | Value | Source | Fetched | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active dependents | 7 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| New dependents (365 days) | 6 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Peak active dependents | 10 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Active dependents as a share of the peak | 0.95 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Binary downloads per release | Not measured | Yes |
MaintenanceLatest human commit: 15 months ago3 not measured
| Signal | Value | Source | Fetched | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latest human commit | 2025-08-04 | GitHub repository | Yes | |
| Latest release | 2021-07-19 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| First release | 2019-08-13 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Latest version | 0.11.0 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Days the oldest outside issue waits for a reply | 1671 | GitHub repository | Yes | |
| Maintainer replies over 365 days | 0 | GitHub repository | Yes | |
| Repository archived | false | GitHub repository | Yes | |
| Repository gone | false | GitHub repository | Yes | |
| Release commit or manifest in the repo | true | crates.io package | Yes | |
| Published docs | true | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Latest release fails cargo check | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Build check date | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Build check toolchain | Not measured | Yes |
SecurityUnpatched vulnerabilities: none
| Signal | Value | Source | Fetched | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unpatched vulnerabilities past the grace window | none | RustSec advisory database | Yes | |
| RustSec unmaintained advisory | none | RustSec advisory database | Yes | |
| Deprecation notice | none | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Deprecated requirement | none | crates.io database dump | Yes |
Distribution21 releases, 15,542 downloads over 30 days5 not measured
| Signal | Value | Source | Fetched | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Releases | 21 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Downloads over 30 days | 15542 | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Binary downloads over the last 3 releases | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Homebrew installs on request over 365 days | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Repology repository families | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Docker pull growth over 90 days | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Docker pulls at the growth baseline | Not measured | Yes | ||
| Every version a prerelease | false | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Every version 0.0.x | false | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Every version yanked | false | crates.io database dump | Yes | |
| Crate deleted from crates.io | false | crates.io database dump | Yes |
Repository268 stars, 22 forks, 6 contributors, 157 commits. Stars alone never qualify a project.
| Signal | Value | Source | Fetched | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 268 | GitHub repository | Yes — one part of the repository route | |
| GitHub forks | 22 | GitHub repository | Yes — one part of the repository route | |
| Contributors with a GitHub account | 6 | GitHub contributors | Yes — one part of the repository route | |
| Commits on the default branch | 157 | GitHub repository | No | |
| Repository's main crate left out of the entry | none | crates.io database dump | Yes |
Facts that never count
| Signal | Value | Source | Fetched | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | crates.io database dump | No | |
| Runs on, from listed crates and their direct dependencies | GPU support unknown | crates.io database dump | No | |
| What shows each backend | no dependency or feature matches a backend row | crates.io database dump | No | |
| Native code, from listed crates and their dependencies | No native code found | crates.io database dump | No | |
| Python bindings, from direct dependencies of listed crates | No Python binding crate found | crates.io database dump | No | |
| Crates that depend on a listed crate directly | 13 | crates.io database dump | No |
Corrections and review history
No correction applies to this entry.
Judgments
A judgment enters only through an approved issue and a merged pull request.
No judgment applies to this entry.