Home/Use Cases
USE CASES · Last verified April 2026

Rust vs Go by use case:
pick the right one for your project.

Clear verdict per scenario. Production examples. When to break the rule. No hedging.

WHY

Goroutines handle 10k+ concurrent connections out of the box. Stdlib covers 90% of needs. Talent pool is 3-4x larger. Ship in days.

Exception: Cloudflare-scale (1T req/day), sub-millisecond latency SLAs
EXAMPLES

Kubernetes, Twitch chat, Uber microservices, CockroachDB

Deep dive →
WHY

Go: fast compile, easy cross-compilation, goroutines if you need concurrent work. Rust: single static binary, bulletproof error handling, ripgrep-level performance.

Exception: Distribution-critical: Rust's single binary with no runtime wins. Team tool: Go compiles 5-10x faster.
EXAMPLES

Rust: ripgrep, fd, bat, exa. Go: kubectl, terraform, gh CLI

Deep dive →
WHY

No garbage collector. Deterministic memory layout. no_std support. Embassy for async embedded. Drop-in for C++ in safety-critical code.

Exception: Legacy systems with existing C codebase where FFI cost is prohibitive
EXAMPLES

Linux kernel (Rust-for-Linux, 6.1+), Microsoft Windows components, Embassy RTOS

Deep dive →
WHY

Memory safety + no GC pauses + zero-cost abstractions = the only language choice that ticks all boxes for consensus-critical, high-frequency systems.

Exception: Cosmos/Tendermint ecosystem is Go (by design). If you're building on that stack, Go is required.
EXAMPLES

Solana, Polkadot, Substrate (Polkadot parachains), Foundry (EVM toolchain)

Deep dive →
WHY

GC pauses of 5-20ms break 60fps. Rust's Bevy engine + wgpu give zero-cost abstractions with deterministic frame timing.

Exception: Scripting logic inside an existing C++ engine (Lua is fine there). Simple games where Go's GC timing is acceptable.
EXAMPLES

Bevy engine, wgpu (WebGPU implementation), Veloren (open world MMO)

Deep dive →
WHY

PyTorch/JAX/scikit-learn have a decade head start. Use Python unless you need Rust-level latency for a production inference server (candle, burn). Go is weak here.

Exception: Serving latency <10ms with high QPS: Rust inference server with candle is worth the cost.
EXAMPLES

Hugging Face candle (Rust), burn (Rust ML framework). PyTorch for everything else.

Deep dive →