- Sources: primary, discussion
- Summary: PyPI shipped a change on 2026-08-24 so that only requests ending in
.whl, .tar.gz, or .zip produce a download record, where previously every object under a release prefix counted, including PEP 658 .metadata sidecars that installers fetch to read wheel metadata without downloading the wheel, .asc signatures, .egg uploads, and formats frozen under PEP 527. A published query over urllib3 for 2026-08-18 to 2026-08-25 shows about 39 percent of counted objects were not distribution files, and daily totals across PyPI, previously cycling between roughly 4.5 billion at weekends and a little over 7 billion midweek, step down after the change. PyPI states the discontinuity at 2026-08-24 in the public BigQuery dataset is expected and permanent, that historical rows are unchanged, and that download counts are not a proxy for popularity or criticality. - Why it matters: Anything reading those counts, including pypistats.org, changes shape at a fixed date, so any comparison spanning 2026-08-24 is invalid.
- Follow-up: Track whether range requests, which still count a 206 the same as a 200, are addressed, since PyPI states that work is unscheduled.
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