smallvecSponsor SmallVecSponsor

Open source, maintained in the open

Help fund ten hours a week of SmallVec maintenance.

SmallVec is used inside the Rust compiler and depended on by more than 150,000 crates. Reaching the $249 monthly goal would let the maintainer dedicate ten hours each week to maintenance, security fixes, reviews, testing, and releases. One-time sponsorships are appreciated too and help sustain this work.

Support SmallVec maintenance Read project updates

Monthly goal $249 for ten hours of maintenance each week

From the Rust Foundation funding team

SmallVec is amongst the 30 most downloaded crates on crates.io. It implements a very useful data structure, which we use in many places in the Rust compiler to improve its performance.

Due to its low-level nature, the crate contains unsafe code, which needs to be properly maintained and reviewed. It is also important to promptly resolve any potential security vulnerabilities found in such code.

Jakub BeránekFunding team, Rust Foundation
1.4Bdownloads overall
150kdependent crates
40%of the Rust ecosystem
370Mdownloads in 90 days

Figures as of October 2026. Download counts: crates.io. Dependent crate count and ecosystem share: lib.rs.

Across the Rust ecosystem

Where SmallVec is used

SmallVec is used directly in major Rust software and reaches many more projects through shared libraries and framework dependencies.

Compiler

Rust compiler

rustc_arena uses SmallVec to collect values before storing them in the compiler’s arena.

View Rust source
Platforms and browsers

Android & Chromium

Android uses SmallVec through libquiche; Chromium’s Rust text shaping code uses it in harfrust.

Android source Chromium source
Rust web servers

Across the web stack

SmallVec is used by most of Rust’s web-server ecosystem. Hyper depends on it directly and powers many of the servers and frameworks behind Rust web apps.

Hyper crate

How the maintenance gap began

One maintainer ran out of time.
SmallVec went dark.

Nov 2025–Aug 2026the repository was nearly inactive

Matt had less time to maintain SmallVec starting around 2023. In September 2025, he asked for another active maintainer, explaining that he had not been able to give the crate the time it deserved and that some pull requests were long delayed. He planned to keep maintaining it until he could hand it off. From November 2025 to August 2026, the repository was nearly inactive. There was no funded maintenance plan or backup maintainer to take over. The backlog grew, security fixes needed attention, and SmallVec’s API fell behind Vecin completeness.

I’m Alejandro, SmallVec’s current maintainer. I took over in August 2026, after months of near-total inactivity. Since then, issues have been triaged, PRs reviewed, security fixes shipped, and releases managed. There is still a lot to do. SmallVec’s reach did not come with a funded plan or a backup maintainer. I want to make sure the work doesn’t go dark again.

Read project updates

Since taking over

The work is moving.
Let’s keep it moving.

In two months, the backlog was cleared, releases moved forward, and testing grew stronger. Here’s what that work looks like.

40+

Contributors

People now contributing to SmallVec’s ongoing development.

<24h

Response time

Keeping questions and reviews moving.

~200

Issues triaged

Cleared a backlog that had grown for more than two years.

~200

PRs merged

Total since taking over.

CI + fuzzer

New test infrastructure

More coverage and stronger checks.

✓Security fixes shipped. Several vulnerabilities fixed, with a new fuzzer and CI adding stronger checks.

↗Releases moving forward. Managed v1.16 and the v2 release series from alpha.13, with around 75M downloads across those releases.

Repository and maintenance figures as of October 2026, from the SmallVec GitHub repository. Release download counts are from crates.io.

Monthly funding goals

What each goal makes possible.

  1. Current goal

    $249/ month

    10 hours of maintenance work each week.

  2. Next milestone

    $499/ month

    Afford a second maintainer.

  3. Future goal

    $999/ month

    Improve work conditions for both maintainers.

  4. Future goal

    $1,749/ month

    Start a security vulnerability bug bounty program.

  5. Future goal

    $2,999/ month

    Start a feature bounty program.

  6. Future goal

    $4,999/ month

    Even better maintenance, up to 15 hours per week for each maintainer.

Individual sponsorships

Support the people behind SmallVec

Use a “Sponsor on GitHub” link to sponsor that person directly; profile links simply open their GitHub profile. These individual sponsorships are separate from the SmallVec maintenance goal. To fund that work, support the SmallVec maintenance goal.

Maintainers & project leadership

Current maintainer, Servo project supervisor, and former maintainer.

Core contributors

The five v2 core contributors, ordered by their areas of responsibility.

See the v2 core contributor listing in the SmallVec repository README .

Help keep SmallVec healthy

Make the work behind
SmallVec sustainable.

Monthly support gives the work that keeps a widely used crate dependable—issue triage, reviews, testing, security fixes, and releases—a planned place in ongoing maintenance. One-time sponsorships are appreciated too.

MONTHLY GOAL
$249/ month

Reaching this goal would let the maintainer dedicate ten hours each week to SmallVec maintenance, security fixes, reviews, testing, and releases.

Support SmallVec maintenance Supporting the SmallVec organization

Before you sponsor

Questions, answered

Who receives the money?

Your sponsorship goes to the SmallVec organization through GitHub Sponsors and supports the crate’s ongoing maintenance. Alejandro leads this work as SmallVec’s maintainer.

Can I give once?

Yes—one-time sponsorships are appreciated. Choose the one-time option on GitHub Sponsors; monthly support contributes to the $249 goal for dedicated maintenance time.

What am I funding?

Issue triage, reviews, testing, security fixes, and releases. Reaching the $249 monthly goal would let Alejandro dedicate ten hours each week to this work.

Can sponsorship influence the roadmap?

Sponsors receive priority support for questions, but roadmap decisions stay maintainer-led. Sponsorship does not buy roadmap control or guaranteed prioritization of feature requests.