There are some reasonably good metrics available at Repology: Pretty picture: https://repology.org/repositories/graphs https://repology.org/repositories/graphs

There are some reasonably good metrics available at Repology: Pretty picture: https://repology.org/repositories/graphs https://repology.org/repositories/graphs Numbers for the X axis: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total Numbers for the Y axis: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest Summary for people who like neither pictures nor tables: * Debian Unstable (31k) has way more packages than Arch (9k without AUR), but the AUR (57k) has way more packages than Debian. * The total number of packages that are at the latest upstream version are about equal for Debian (17k) and AUR (15k). Arch (without AUR) has way less total updated packages (7k). * Arch has about the highest percentage of fully updated packages (85%), Debian is lower (72%), and the AUR is even lower (69%). * NixOS rivals the AUR in number of total packages (53k), has a big margin in total latest upstream versions over everything else (24k, thus 30% more than Debian or Arch), but does not have as high as an update percentage (79%) as as Arch. The numbers are not perfect because of split-packages and alternative packages (e.g. the AUR often has addtional `-git` variants), but they give a rough idea. Hope this helps!