Decision Workspace
tlua vs mlua vs tree-sitter-lua
Side-by-side comparison of Rust crates
69
tlua
stablev8.0.0
Zero-cost high-level wrapper for Tarantool-LuaJIT
68
mlua
growingv0.11.6
High level bindings to Lua 5.5/5.4/5.3/5.2/5.1 (including LuaJIT) and Luau with async/await features and support of writing native Lua modules in Rust.
66
tree-sitter-lua
growingv0.5.0
Lua grammar for tree-sitter
Core Metrics
| tlua | mlua | tree-sitter-lua | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Score | 69 | 68 | 66 |
| Total Downloads | 121.4K | 4.3M | 1.3M |
| 30d Downloads | 5.6K | 263.9K | 419.7K |
| Dependents | 26 | 3.1K | 829 |
| Releases | 18 | 82 | 23 |
| Last Updated | 8d ago | 59d ago | 29d ago |
| Age | 4y 3m | 6y 4m | 4y 7m |
Health Breakdown
tlua
Maintenance
20
Quality
18
Community
10
Popularity
6
Documentation
15
mlua
Maintenance
17
Quality
13
Community
15
Popularity
8
Documentation
15
tree-sitter-lua
Maintenance
16
Quality
14
Community
19
Popularity
7
Documentation
10
Technical Details
| tlua | mlua | tree-sitter-lua | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Version | 8.0.0 | 0.11.6 | 0.5.0 |
| Stable (≥1.0) | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| License | MIT | MIT | MIT |
| Dependencies | 7 | 28 | 3 |
| Crate Size | 64KB | 262KB | 47KB |
| Features | 2 | 20 | 0 |
| Yanked % | 5.6% | 1.2% | 4.3% |
| Edition | 2021 | 2021 | 2021 |
| MSRV | 1.89 | 1.85.0 | — |
| Owners | 3 | 1 | 2 (team) |
Links
Quick Verdict
- •tlua leads with a health score of 69/100, but none of the options score above 80.
- •mlua has the most downloads (4.3M), suggesting wider adoption.
- •mlua is depended on by 3.1K crates — strongest ecosystem trust.
- •mlua, tree-sitter-lua are pre-1.0 — API may change.