Download counter on GitHub

[paulo-correia]

Hi,

I didn’t see an Download Counter on any Project.

This could be useful to find out if it’s famous or several people used it.

Thanks,

Paulo

[RajaDanyal]

you can  use github developers api to check that

• API /repos/:owner/:repo/traffic/clones, to get the total number of clones and breakdown per day or week, but: only for the last 14 days.
• API /repos/:owner/:repo/releases/:release_id for getting downloads number of your assets (files attached to the release), field download_count 

[irwir]

* API [/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/:release_id](https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/releases/#get-a-single-release) for getting downloads number of your assets (files attached to the release), field download_count

URL in the form https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases displays zero or near-zero counts.
Counting for releases appears to be broken (the same was for packages, but this might have been fixed)

[irwir]

@MuhammadUmar1204
Thanks for the email reply.
Download counts do not change in logged in state; and there were not mere hours, but days without using this kind of URLs.
There are no error messages, browser shows seemingly normally parsed JSON.
For releases, from time to time there could be a single digit increase in the count.
Numbers for old releases are far from zero, but it appears that counting mostly stopped for all files.

It might be mentioned that similar issue with packages still left some counters as zero (after reports that the issues might be fixed).

[KrisKasprzak]

I would really like to see a built-in counter for downloads. That seems pretty useful for developers and users. Having to write our own and only good for 2 weeks is really not helpful.

Can GitHub reconsider adding this feature? I’m sure others would applaud this capability.

[blackjack4494]

There is this where you can check download stats online. Should be fairly easy to integrate into gh-pages. However if you want a badge for Readme you would need an external service/api.

[MuhammadUmar1204]

Hello,

Thank you for reporting this. The behavior you’re encountering is most likely due to GitHub’s rate limiting for unauthenticated users. When accessing repositories without logging in, the number of allowed requests is significantly lower. After a small number of repeated file views, the system may return an HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests) response to prevent excessive usage.

This is why the issue appears after a few attempts and across different repositories—it is tied to request limits rather than a specific repository or file.

What you can do:
Log in to your GitHub account to benefit from higher rate limits
Wait a few minutes before retrying, as the limit resets automatically
Avoid rapid or repeated file access without authentication
Regarding your feedback:

You’ve raised a valid point. The current error message does not clearly explain the cause or suggest next steps. Improving the clarity of rate limit notifications would definitely enhance the user experience.

In summary, this behavior is expected under current rate limiting policies, rather than a bug.

Thank you for highlighting it.