Rust vs Go performance:
2026 benchmark data with sources.
Every figure linked to its primary source. TechEmpower, Benchmarks Game, and production-scale reality checks from Discord, Cloudflare, and Uber.
HTTP server throughput (TechEmpower Round 23)
Plaintext responses per second, identical hardware, no database. Source: techempower.com/benchmarks
CPU-bound: Benchmarks Game (Rust vs Go)
Source: benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net
| Benchmark | Rust (s) | Go (s) | Rust advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| binary-trees (GC pressure) | 1.34s | 16.80s | 12.5x faster |
| n-body (float math) | 4.54s | 13.02s | 2.9x faster |
| fasta (file I/O) | 1.22s | 2.42s | 2.0x faster |
| pidigits (big integers) | 1.21s | 1.36s | 1.1x faster |
| mandelbrot (SIMD-friendly) | 1.34s | 5.04s | 3.8x faster |
Memory footprint: typical web services
Production-scale reality checks
Replaced NGINX as the primary HTTP proxy for 1 trillion requests per day. Built from scratch in Rust. This is not a micro-benchmark: it's the most heavily trafficked Rust program in the world.
Source →Go service caused latency spikes every 2 minutes from GC pauses, even after memory pool optimisation. Rust rewrite eliminated all GC-related latency. 8 million concurrent Read State entries served without jitter.
Source →Profile-guided optimisation (PGO) applied to Go microservices gave a 4% CPU reduction fleet-wide. At Uber's scale (600,000+ CPU cores), 4% = 24,000 cores. This demonstrates that Go at hyperscale is also worth optimising.
Source →Go's goroutine model handles the concurrency of millions of simultaneous chat rooms without drama. No memory pressure that would require Rust. Go is fast enough for this workload and much faster to maintain.
Source →The honest take: Go is fast enough for 99% of services
The Cloudflare and Discord migrations happened because they hit real, specific performance walls that Go could not clear. Both teams were running services at extraordinary scale with precise latency requirements. For an API serving <100k requests/second, or a CLI tool used by 10,000 engineers, Go's performance is irrelevant to your business outcome. Pick the language that ships faster and is easier to maintain. That's usually Go.