Go vs Rust: Complete Comparison Guide
Compare Go and Rust on performance, memory safety, concurrency, and learning curve. Discover which systems language is the best fit for your project.
Go
A programming language developed by Google designed for simplicity, fast compilation, and built-in concurrency via goroutines. Go combines the performance of a compiled language with the productivity of a scripting language. It is widely used for cloud infrastructure, microservices, and CLI tools.
Rust
A systems programming language that guarantees memory safety without a garbage collector through its ownership system. Rust performs two to three times faster than Go in most benchmarks and offers zero-cost abstractions. It is used for systems programming, WebAssembly, and high-performance services.
Comparison table
| Feature | Go | Rust |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | Fast — suitable for most backend tasks | 2-3x faster than Go in benchmarks — close to C/C++ performance |
| Memory safety | Garbage collector — safe but with pauses | Ownership system — compile-time guarantees without GC pauses |
| Concurrency | Goroutines — millions of lightweight threads easy to spawn | Async/await + tokio — powerful but more complex than goroutines |
| Compilation speed | Very fast — large projects compile in seconds | Slow — large projects can take minutes |
| Learning curve | Low — intentionally simple syntax with few concepts | High — ownership, lifetimes, and borrow checker require time |
| Ecosystem | Mature for cloud/infra — Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform | Growing — strong in WebAssembly, CLI tools, and embedded systems |
Verdict
Go and Rust serve different needs despite both being compiled languages. Go is designed for productivity — its simple syntax and fast compilation make teams effective quickly. Rust is designed for performance and safety — its ownership system eliminates memory errors at compile time. In benchmarks, Rust performs two to three times faster than Go. Choose Go when development speed and simplicity are the priority. Choose Rust when maximum performance, memory efficiency, or systems programming are required.
Our recommendation
At MG Software, we do not use Go or Rust in our standard stack, but we recognize their value for specific use cases. For clients needing high-performance backend services, we evaluate whether performance requirements justify Go or Rust over our Node.js stack. We recommend Go for cloud-native tooling and microservices where simplicity matters. We suggest Rust for latency-critical systems or when WebAssembly integration with our Next.js frontends is desired.
Frequently asked questions
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