Is protobuf healthy, maintained, and safe?
Maintained, but watch it — protobuf has real signals (drift, thin maintenance, or advisories) worth tracking.
The verdict
protobuf earns a health score of 55/100, a medium risk rating, computed deterministically from live PyPI release history, and the OSV vulnerability database. Maintained, but watch it — protobuf has real signals (drift, thin maintenance, or advisories) worth tracking.
Its most recent release shipped on 9 July 2026 — 19 days ago — so development is clearly active. Across 213 releases the cadence has been steady, which is a good sign of an ongoing maintenance rhythm. PyPI doesn't expose a reliable maintainer count, so bus-factor isn't scored here — treat maintenance depth as unknown rather than assumed.
OSV lists 9 known advisories for protobuf, including 4 high. Review whether your version is in the affected range and whether a fixed release is available before depending on it. Each advisory is listed with its OSV/GHSA identifier below.
protobuf is usable but carries real signals — pin versions, watch for new advisories, and keep a fallback in mind. This is a one-time snapshot of a single package — real projects depend on dozens or hundreds of packages, and any one of them can drift or be compromised between releases. Run your own requirements.txt through the free health check, or have OSPulse monitor your whole dependency tree continuously.
Evidence trail — deterministic, auditable
Known vulnerabilities (9)
protobuf affected by a JSON recursion depth bypass
protobuf-cpp and protobuf-python have potential Denial of Service issue
protobuf-python has a potential Denial of Service issue
protobuf susceptible to buffer overflow
protobuf allows remote authenticated attackers to cause a heap-based buffer overflow.
Nullptr dereference when a null char is present in a proto symbol. The symbol is parsed incorrectly, leading to an unchecked call into the proto file's name during generation of the resulting error me
protobuf affected by a JSON recursion depth bypass
protobuf-python has a potential Denial of Service issue
protobuf-cpp and protobuf-python have potential Denial of Service issue
Key facts
- Latest version
- v7.35.1
- Last release
- 9 July 2026 (19 days ago)
- Total releases
- 213
- First release
- 10 July 2008
- Package age
- 18.1 years
- Maintainers
- not exposed by PyPI
- Known advisories
- 9
- Confidence
- High
Frequently asked
Is protobuf still maintained?
Yes — protobuf released as recently as 9 July 2026 (19 days ago), so it is actively maintained.
Does protobuf have known security vulnerabilities?
Yes — OSV lists 9 advisories for protobuf. See the advisory list on this page for the OSV/GHSA identifiers.
Is protobuf safe to use?
Maintained, but watch it — protobuf has real signals (drift, thin maintenance, or advisories) worth tracking. OSPulse rates it 55/100 (medium risk) based on release recency, cadence and known vulnerabilities.
Other PyPI packages we've checked
protobuf is one package. What about the other hundreds in your tree?
Paste your own requirements.txt into the free health check for an instant snapshot — or let OSPulse monitor your whole dependency tree continuously, before your CVE scanner wakes up.
Data from the PyPI registry & OSV.dev · snapshot generated 2026-07-28 · scores are deterministic and recomputed on each refresh.