Exploring the top Rust web frameworks - LogRocket Blog (2024)

Editor’s note: This post was updated on 21 April 2023 to add Axum and warp to the list of frontend web frameworks and update our considerations about the maturity of some of the previously mentioned frameworks. This update also includes a comparison of the most popular Rust web frameworks.

Exploring the top Rust web frameworks - LogRocket Blog (1)

Rust is one of the most popular languages for developers because of its open source, fast, reliable, and high-performance features. When building a new API in Rust, it is important to consider the benefits and drawbacks of web frameworks for both frontend and backend development.

In this article, we will discuss what a web framework is and provide recommendations for which frameworks to use for Rust in frontend and backend development. Let’s get started.

What is a web framework?

A web framework is a software tool that supports the development of web applications; a web framework can range from a small codebase for micro apps to a large codebase for enterprise apps and everything in between. The most extensive web frameworks provide libraries of support for databases, templating, sessions, migration, and other utilities to speed up the development process. More simplistic frameworks focus more acutely on frontend management for static content rendering.

How to choose the best Rust web framework

Whatever your project needs, web frameworks can provide the web services, web resources, and web APIs that development teams need to help bring their ideas to life. When choosing the appropriate web framework for your project, your development team should consider the relative importance of the following:

  • Security
  • Flexibility
  • Community growth
  • Project size
  • Releases
  • Documentation
  • Community support

Depending on your project’s priorities, different web frameworks will help you address your most pressing development requirements. In this article, we will specifically discuss frameworks built with Rust.

What are the benefits of using a web framework?

Web frameworks make web development and building desktop applications easier for developers. By standardizing the building process and automating common activities and tasks, web frameworks can save developers time and even promote reusing code to increase efficiency.
In the following sections, we will review web frameworks in Rust as they pertain to both frontend and backend development. We will then look into each framework’s phase in terms of stability, production readiness, and project size.

Frontend web frameworks and WebAssembly

WebAssembly (Wasm) is a type of coding in low-level languages that can be run in modern web browsers. It supports C/C++, C#, Go, and Rust, with a target compilation for byte code so it can be run on the web with nearly-native performance. Wasm output is run alongside JavaScript and can be published to npm and other packages.

Rust uses a tool called wasm-pack to assemble and package crates that target Wasm. To learn more about Wasm and Rust, check out our guide to getting started with WebAssembly and Rust.

Stdweb

Stdweb is a frontend standard library that gives Rust the power to communicate directly with JavaScript web APIs. It was crafted to give developers the power to create full-fledged JavaScript apps in Rust by providing easy API binding between the languages to improve speed and performance.

Stdweb supports closures, arbitrary structure, and the standard components of web APIs, including DOM, events, and windows. Here’s a link to a few sample projects to get a grasp of how it works.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small

Yew

Yew is an improved version of stdweb. It is a component-based framework similar to React and Elm, with support for multi-threading, component-based patterns, and other features similar to stdweb.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small, medium, and large

Percy

Percy is a toolkit developed for building single-page apps (SPAs) and managing UI, including optimization for specific browsers and screen sizes (desktop and mobile). Percy is still a work in progress; improvements are needed for better structure, optimal boilerplate, and general bug fixes.

  • Stable: No 🚫
  • Production-ready: No 🚫
  • Project size: Small, medium, and large

Sauron

Sauron is a micro frontend framework that was inspired by The Elm Architecture. It has support for events, state management, and components. Sauron uses a library called html2sauron to convert HTML into Sauron view code for rendering optimization.

  • Stable: No 🚫
  • Production-ready: No 🚫
  • Project size: Small

Dioxus

Dioxus is a UI library elegantly designed to be React-like — it’s built around a virtual DOM to support building cross-platform apps for web, mobile, and desktop. It has support for component-based architecture, concurrency and async, props, an inbuilt error handler, state management, and more.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small, medium, and large

Iced

Iced is a GUI library for cross-platform development. It’s structured in Elm style and supports reactive programming, inbuilt widgets, and async while also having a modular/reusable component-based architecture with type safety and simplicity.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small or medium

Tauri

Tauri is a Rust library built as a light JavaScript framework for building desktop applications with the integration of any frontend technology that renders HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into your web view for its UI.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small or medium

For the best documentation and impressive support for interpolation with JavaScript, I suggest your selection should be determined by your specific use case, library stability, and the listed production readiness for each framework above.

Backend web frameworks

Backend development refers to the server-side operation of a web app. It also describes the core operations of an app that usually controls and handles its data and actions, such as submitting a form or logging into a web account. Backend development focuses primarily on data management and the database, scripting, automation, and architecture necessary to handle it. Some of the most common features of a typical backend development framework include:

  • Database management
  • Session
  • Templating
  • Object-relational mapping (ORM)
  • Migrations

Rust provides various web frameworks for backend development, including a combination of tools, helpers, and libraries from different vendors that are each designed to provide a way to build, test, and run apps with efficiency, security, and flexibility.

Rocket

Rocket is a popular web framework that makes it easy for developers to write fast web apps without skimping on security, flexibility, or function. It has support for testing libraries, cookies, streams, routes, templates, databases, ORMs, boilerplates, and more. Rocket also has a large and active developer community.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small, medium, large

Actix

Like Rocket, Actix is another powerful backend web framework. Actix features an architectural pattern based on Rust’s actor system and is well-equipped for building writing services and micro apps. It has support for routing, middleware, testing, WebSockets, databases, and automatic server reloading, and can be hosted on Nginx. Actix can be used to build a full-scale web app and API.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small or medium

Axum

Axum is a web framework that focuses on providing a foundation for building asynchronous, scalable, and maintainable web applications. It was designed with the needs of modern web services in mind, including support for HTTP/2, WebSockets, and other modern protocols.
It was built on Tokio, Tower, and Hyper, which in hindsight, used the libraries for middleware, services, etc.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Medium, large

warp

Warp is designed to be fast, lightweight, and composable, making it ideal for building high-performance web services and APIs.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small, medium

Gotham

Gotham is a flexible web framework built for stable Rust that promotes “stability, safety, security, and speed.” It is statically typed, ensuring the application is always correctly expressed at compile time. Gotham provides async support with the help of Tokio and hyper.

Gotham supports routing, extractors (type-safe data requests), middleware, state sharing, and testing. Gotham does not have structure, boilerplate, or database support.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: No 🚫
  • Project size: Small, medium, large

Rouille

Rouille is a microweb framework that employs a linear request and response design via a listening socket that parses HTTP requests. It is built to be easy to learn for Rust users. Rouille has support for requests through CGI, input (request header and body), content-encoding, proxy, sessions, and WebSockets.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small, medium

Thruster

Thruster is a fast and reliable Rust web framework inspired by the layering and design of Koa and Express.js. It is SSL-ready, secure, intuitive, and testable. Thruster is built to accommodate async/await and provides support for middleware, error handling, databases, and testing.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: Yes ✅
  • Project size: Small, medium, large

Tide

Tide is a minimal framework similar to Express.js (Node.js), Sinatra (Ruby), and Flask (Python) for rapid development that promotes building web apps in asynchronous versions. Tide provides support for routing, auth, listener, log, template engines, middleware, testing, and other utilities.

  • Stable: Yes ✅
  • Production-ready: No 🚫
  • Project size: Small, medium, large

Dropshot

Dropshot is a simple and lightweight server-side library for creating REST APIs. It has support for openAPI specs, async, and logging

  • Stable: No 🚫
  • Production-ready: No 🚫
  • Project size: Small, medium

For building advanced web apps, I recommend Rocket, Actix, Axum, warp, and Tide (for asynchronous support) to roll your backend. They each offer a sizable support library and have the largest communities in comparison to other frameworks. They are also well-liked in the Rust community.

Comparing the most popular web frameworks for Rust

Actix, Rocket, Axum, and warp are all popular web frameworks for Rust, each with their own unique features and strengths. Here’s a closer look at the commonalities found for each of them:

FeaturesExplanationActixRocketAxumwarp
Async/await supportActix, Rocket, Axum, and warp all use Rust’s async/await syntax to provide non-blocking I/O operations for web applications. This allows for better performance and scalability, as the framework can handle multiple requests simultaneously without blocking or slowing down.
MiddlewareMiddleware is a common feature in web frameworks that allows developers to add functionality to the request-response cycle, such as logging, authentication, and error handling. All of the most popular Rust web frameworks – Actix, Rocket, Tide, and warp – support middleware.
WebSockets supportThey all support WebSocket but the specific syntax and features for working with WebSockets may vary across the frameworks, so the choice of framework will depend on the specific needs of the project.
Concurrerncy & PerformanceActix and Axum may be better suited for applications that require high levels of concurrency and performance, while Rocket and warp may be better suited for applications that prioritize ease of use and flexibility.🚫🚫
Cookie and sessionCookies and sessions are important components of many web applications, allowing developers to store and retrieve data that is associated with a specific user or client
Community growth sizeAll four web frameworks have active communities and are continuing to grow in popularity. Actix and Rocket are more established frameworks and have larger communities, while Axum and warp are newer but still have growing communities of users.

Conclusion

The majority of Rust web frameworks all have minor releases but still are used largely in production by the community. Having said this, when choosing the correct web framework for your frontend or backend development project, it is important to consider what the framework’s community support and growth is like, the stability of the framework, if it is production-ready, and whether it is right for the size of your project. Depending on your answers, you will be on your way to using web frameworks to improve efficiency, speed, and productivity in Rust.

LogRocket: Full visibility into web frontends for Rust apps

Debugging Rust applications can be difficult, especially when users experience issues that are hard to reproduce. If you’re interested in monitoring and tracking the performance of your Rust apps, automatically surfacing errors, and tracking slow network requests and load time, try LogRocket.

LogRocket is like a DVR for web and mobile apps, recording literally everything that happens on your Rust application. Instead of guessing why problems happen, you can aggregate and report on what state your application was in when an issue occurred. LogRocket also monitors your app’s performance, reporting metrics like client CPU load, client memory usage, and more.

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Exploring the top Rust web frameworks - LogRocket Blog (2024)

FAQs

What is the best web framework for Rust? ›

The Rocket and Actix Web Rust backend frameworks are considered the most comprehensive solutions in the Rust ecosystem so far. They both are stable, production-ready, and adaptable to the needs of both small and large businesses.

What is the most powerful web framework? ›

Top Web Development Frameworks in 2024
  • Express. ...
  • React JS. ...
  • Angular. ...
  • Next. js. ...
  • Vue. js. ...
  • Gatsby. Gatsby is a modern web framework that uses React to build blazing-fast websites and apps. ...
  • Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails, commonly known as Rails, is a powerful and user-friendly web development framework written in Ruby. ...
  • A Final Word.
Jan 29, 2024

Is Rust ready for web development? ›

Rust is undoubtedly a great choice for building web applications in many cases. It offers significantly better efficiency and performance as well as improved reliability and maintainability compared to other technologies commonly used for building web applications.

Is Rust a JavaScript framework? ›

Non-JS languages are worth exploring

Rust is a good example of this. It is a statically typed language that is designed to be safe and fast. This makes it a good choice for systems programming, where safety and performance are critical.

Is Rust better than Python? ›

Speed. Rust's performance translates into faster execution speeds than Python, especially for CPU-bound tasks. Python's interpreted nature introduces overhead, making it slower in comparison, particularly for performance-critical applications.

What is the most popular Rust backend? ›

The top two are definitely axum and actix-web.

What is the fastest web framework in the world? ›

Which is the fastest (frontend, backend) framework for web development? JS report says that the fastest front-end framework is Solid JS. Laravel, on the other hand, is the fastest of all the most popular back-end frameworks.

What is the most mature web framework? ›

React is perfect for creating large web apps with continuously changing data over time.
  • Vue.js. Vue. ...
  • Express. Express is a Node. ...
  • Django. Django is an open-source and full-stack web framework written in Python for developing dynamic websites. ...
  • Ruby on Rails. ...
  • Laravel. ...
  • Spring.
Jul 20, 2023

What is the easiest framework to learn? ›

There are several web development frameworks that are considered easy. Some of these are Angular Js, Flask, Django, Symfony, Express etc. Any easy framework is easy to use, learn and also offers flexibility to allow for the development of various types of web applications that meet the varied needs of users.

Is Rust going to replace JavaScript? ›

Rust-based tooling is on the rise, slowly replacing our JavaScript tools. It replaces our JavaScript bundlers, CSS minifiers, formatters, and linters. Not only does it result in faster tools for Front-End development, but Rust also offers the possibility of being used in the browser through WebAssembly.

What browser was made with Rust? ›

Servo is an experimental browser engine designed to take advantage of the memory safety properties and concurrency features of the Rust programming language.

Is Rust better than go? ›

Performance. Both Go and Rust are very fast. However, while Go's design favours fast compilation, Rust is optimised for fast execution. Rust's run-time performance is also more consistent, because it doesn't use garbage collection.

Why isn t Rust more popular? ›

Rust is a Systems Programming language. It falls in the same category as C or C++. People usually don't have to make use of C/C++ or any systems engineering language that often. Rust is relatively new and doesn't have higher level abstractions for it.

Why JavaScript devs are switching to Rust in 2024? ›

The main reason is that Rust is much faster and more secure than JavaScript. Rust is not appropriate for front-end development, but it is a great choice for back-end development. Rust is a compiled language that is known for its speed, performance, and memory safety.

Is Rust harder to learn than JavaScript? ›

OTOH, languages like Java/Python/Javascript present a much simpler model of how the machine works compared to Rust, and so might be easier as an entry point to programming in general - you simply don't need to know about issues like ownership, lifetimes, destructors, etc, to learn how to write code.

What framework does Rust use? ›

Tauri is a popular framework for Rust developers who want to build desktop applications for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. It allows you to use any front-end framework that compiles to HTML/CSS/JavaScript to build user interfaces that use a Rust backend.

What is the best web framework in Rust 2024? ›

Axum
  • Thruster is a fast and reliable Rust web framework inspired by the layering and design of Koa and Express. ...
  • Tide is a minimal framework similar to Express. ...
  • Dropshot is a simple and lightweight server-side library for creating REST APIs.
Jan 7, 2024

What is the best IDE for developing in Rust? ›

Table of contents
  • IDE 1: Visual Studio Code.
  • IDE 2: IntelliJ IDEA.
  • IDE 3: CLion.
  • IDE 4: Atom.
  • IDE 5: RustDT.
  • IDE 6: Visual Studio.
Dec 31, 2023

What is the fastest backend framework in Rust? ›

Methodology:
  • Actix [package] name = "actix" version = "0.1.0" ...
  • Axum [package] name = "axum-hello" version = "0.1.0" ...
  • Rocket [package] name = "rocket-hello" version = "0.1.0" ...
  • Tide [package] name = "tide-hello" ...
  • Gotham [package] name = "gotham-hello" ...
  • Ntex [package] name = "ntex-hello" ...
  • POEM [package] name = "poem-hello"
Jan 4, 2024

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