flosse / rust-web-framework-comparison

A comparison of some web frameworks and libs written in Rust

Rust web framework comparison

A comparison of some web frameworks written in Rust.

This overview only contains frameworks that work on stable Rust.

Table of Contents

• Rust web framework comparison
  • Table of Contents
  • Frontend frameworks (WASM)
    • Outdated frontend frameworks
  • Server frameworks
    • High-Level Server Frameworks
    • Low-Level Frameworks
    • Outdated server frameworks
  • Client frameworks
    • Outdated client frameworks
  • Supplemental libraries
    • Templating
    • Websocket Libraries

Frontend frameworks (WASM)

Since WASM support is available in most browsers we can use Rust to build web applications :)

Name	Stars	Contributors	Activity	Downloads	Virtual DOM	SSR	Rendering	Architecture	Repo	Docs	License	Version
Dioxus				123.1k	yes	yes	HTML	React/Redux
dominator				96.1k	no	no	HTML	FRP
egui				1841.0k	no	no	Canvas	ImGUI
Iced				391.5k	no	no	Canvas	TEA
Kobold				1.4k	no		HTML	React/Redux
Leptos				240.3k	no	yes	HTML	FRP
MoonZoon				-	no	no	HTML	FRP
sauron				124.5k	yes	yes	HTML	TEA
Silkenweb				1.9k	no	yes	HTML	FRP
Sycamore				121.1k	no	yes	HTML	FRP
Vizia				0.6k	no	no	Canvas
yew				1000.7k	yes	yes	HTML	React/Redux

Outdated frontend frameworks

Name	Stars	Contributors	Activity	Downloads	Virtual DOM	SSR	Rendering	Architecture	Repo	Docs	License	Version
dodrio				122.4k
draco				-
dumle				-
frender				0.6k	yes	no
mika				0.4k
mogwai				9.8k	no	yes	HTML
percy				-	yes	yes	HTML
ruukh				-
Seed				243.7k	yes	no	HTML	TEA
smithy				4.6k
spair				1.4k	no	no	HTML
squark				-
stdweb				9757.5k
willow				-

Server frameworks

High-Level Server Frameworks

Name	Stars	Contributors	Activity	Repo	Docs	License	Version	Async	HTTPS	HTTP/2	Base	Client
actix-web								yes	yes	yes	tokio	no
axum								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
graphul								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
Poem								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
rocket								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
rouille								no	yes			no
salvo								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
Thruster								yes	yes	yes	tokio (or hyper)	no
trillium								yes	yes	no	tokio	no
Viz								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
warp								yes	yes	yes	hyper	no
zino								yes

Low-Level Frameworks

Name	Stars	Contributors	Activity	Repo	Docs	License	Version	Async	HTTPS	HTTP/2	Base	Client
actix-http								yes	yes	yes		yes
hyper								yes	yes	yes		yes
tiny-http								no	yes	no		no

Outdated server frameworks

Name	Stars	Contributors	Activity	Repo	Docs	License	Version	Async	HTTPS	HTTP/2	Base	Client
cargonaouts
civet
conduit
gotham								yes	yes	no	hyper	no
hydrogen
iron
kinglet
nickel
rustful
rustless
sappers
shio
solicit
Tide								yes	yes	no	async-std	no
tk-http
tower-web

Client frameworks

To build web clients with Rust, you can choose between these libraries:

• reqwest (- / repository / documentation)
• awc (- / repository / api docs)
• hyper (homepage / repository / documentation)
• jsonrpc (- / repository / documentation)

Outdated client frameworks

• ease

Supplemental libraries

Templating

Name	Repo	Docs	License	Version	Stars	Contributors	Activity
askama
handlebars
liquid
maud
minijinja
ructe
sailfish
tera
yew-template

Outdated templating libraries

Name	Repo	Docs	License	Version	Stars	Contributors	Activity
horrorshow
mustache
stpl
typed-html

Websocket Libraries

Name	Repo	Docs	License	Version	Stars	Contributors	Activity	Client	Server	Async
actix-web								yes	yes	yes
tokio-tungstenite								yes	yes	yes
tungstenite								yes	yes	yes
ws-rs								yes	yes	yes

rust-web-framework-comparison's Issues

Rocket is active and up-to-date

Move Rocket to "High-Level Server Frameworks" Section!

Add Gothan example

Gothan is a flexible web framework that does not sacrifice safety, security or speed, based on stable Rust.

Add Rocket example

Would be nice add a Rocket example. 😄

Real world app using Rocket

Vaultwarden !

A back-end for Bitwarden, written in Rust

Proof: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/blob/5772836be524117085970d338631137aa2ff1f0c/Cargo.toml#L31
Works: perfectly

Yew also supports web_sys

Awesome list :)
Just a quick note that yew has a feature flag for web_sys and one for stdweb
Cheers!

Add lemmy to web projects, it uses actix.

https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy

Another websockets library

There seems to be a good effort going on here: https://github.com/housleyjk/ws-rs

Iron is dead, consider to remove it from list

iron/iron@9e5bccb Iron was marked inactive.

axum opentelemetry

Decision at tokio-rs/axum#769 (comment) was that open telemetry can and thus should be third party , and so that has occurred at https://crates.io/crates/axum-tracing-opentelemetry , now present on https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum/blob/main/ECOSYSTEM.md

IMO this should means it gets a "yes", ideally with a hyperlink to the third party crate which provides it.

Outdated and overcomplicated example for Rustful

I noticed that the example for Rustful is a bit outdated and overcomplicated, compared to the other examples. The HandlerFn struct is no longer necessary, since Rust 1.3, and can be completely removed. It's also not really necessary to have a router if only one thing is served (unless you want to restrict requests to /). Handlers implements Router automatically. I'm not sure how minimal they should be, but here is a recent example of a very small server, including error handling.

Everything else looks correct, I think. The only exception would be the ? on "Static File Serving", which technically is correct but may be misleading. There is no middleware for it, but there are a couple of methods for it in Response. This breaks the pattern a bit...

I could send a PR, but there are a couple of uncertainties, as mentioned.

Rocket 0.5 was HTTP/2 support

https://github.com/SergioBenitez/Rocket/releases/tag/v0.5.0-rc.1

Confirmed to work using: curl --http2 http://127.0.0.1:8000/

OpenHub links

I find OpenHub useful when doing comparisons of frameworks.

e.g. https://openhub.net/p/actix-web vs vs https://openhub.net/p/tide-rs
I just created https://openhub.net/p/axum and https://openhub.net/p/rocket-rs and https://openhub.net/p/warp-rs , so no stats there atm

Are you open to having OpenHub links added?

Could you add a comparator `serverless`. For example, to be able to run ssr on cloudflare worker is ✅

add poem

add poem https://github.com/poem-web/poem

nickel: url shortener example

Might be worth adding this example to your list:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae44aZAac3w

Source: https://gist.github.com/gkbrk/40aa741ad744b46449bf

cc @gkbrk

Template Engines: minijinja

https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja should be also considered imho. given axum-template supports it (maybe even axum-template as utility?)

The rocket example can only be run on nightly

Probably we should add this note for Rocket:

rustup run nightly cargo run --examples hello_world

Add squark

https://github.com/rail44/squark

Add tower-web

https://github.com/carllerche/tower-web

Add zapper as template engine

https://github.com/coder543/zapper
https://ceres1.space/posts/zapper/

Understanding of the criteria "outdated"?

I'd like to understand by which criteria a framework is judged as "outdated"? It's a loaded classification so I think it is fair to be transparent about the criteria by which the frameworks are evaluated.

Additional frontend frameworks

Just noting some new ones down I came across

• https://github.com/Pauan/rust-dominator
• https://github.com/ivanceras/sauron (already included)
• https://github.com/axelf4/dumle

Tera link needs update: https://keats.github.io/tera/

New URL: https://keats.github.io/tera/

The current link appears outdated:

Add perseus

https://framesurge.sh/perseus/en-US

Dynamic metrics?

Hi,
Currently the "Comparison" part is static and should be updated manually.
What do you think about using something like https://shields.io/ to get all the data needed?

Example for hyper:
Markdown: ![Hyper license](https://img.shields.io/github/license/hyperium/hyper.svg)

Markdown: ![Hyper stars](https://img.shields.io/github/stars/hyperium/hyper.svg)

This could avoid maintenance cost but will slow down the loading of the README.
Keep in mind that those results are cached.

I'd be happy to do PRs on that.

Is there any backend framework use stable rust?

Is there any backend framework use stable rust?

Could we have the "outdated" definition in the README?

It would be nice to know what is the criteria to consider a framework outdated according to the document.

Add yew

https://github.com/DenisKolodin/yew

Real-world web projects using Rust In china

China Rust Community Site : http://rust-lang-cn.org/
It's create by Iron + mysql
Source: rust_lang_cn

Broken "rustwebapp" demo link

The link to the rustwebapp demo is broken -- the owner seems to have closed their GH account.

This seems to be a fork of that project, though.

add ntex-rs

https://github.com/ntex-rs/ntex

rocket is not stale

it is being actively developed(there were some delays to releasing due to some work around getting a legal foundation setup for the project) please move it out of stale!

It would be nice to have an "async" column in comparations

Add tide web framework

https://github.com/rustasync/tide

Rouille is not outdated

The last release 3.3.0 was 12 days ago.

It also seems to be the only framework in the list that is based on tiny-http and is mentioned in the tiny-http crate README.

There are very few non-async web frameworks still going forward these days, so I think it deserves a mention.

Percy is not outdated

https://github.com/chinedufn/percy

The last commit is yesterday.

Templating libaries: Add colum indicating runtime vs compile time template compilation

Templating libraries can compile templates at application compile time, or at runtime.

This is useful information when choosing a templating library, and might warrant a column in the corresponding table.

Add Thruster

https://github.com/trezm/Thruster

Add Actix Lua Web

https://github.com/poga/actix-lua
actix/actix#79 (comment)

Why is Iron marked as deprecated?

I don't think it is deprecated, since:

• I see recent commits at https://github.com/iron/iron/commits/master
• I did not find any official mention of deprecation

(Generally speaking, to mark something as deprecated, it is useful to point to a blog post or some official source for confirmation.)

Add ructe as template engine

https://github.com/kaj/ructe/

Add warp

https://github.com/seanmonstar/warp

date and version

Shouldn't the results include run dates and versions associated with them? These projects are evolving.

Seed is unmaintained, perhaps move it to outdated?

See: seed-rs/seed#672

Why Sauron is listed as outdated?

ivanceras/sauron#9

I see commits, I don't see any abandonment announcement.

It could be that this is a one-man project and I don't update very often.

Maybe such one-man projects should be explicitly marked as such?

hyper uses solicit for http2

Hyper supports http2 using solicit: https://github.com/hyperium/hyper/blob/4828437551c7f5ed3f54acb1c1bf1fd50a6a3516/src/http/h2.rs

add if support http3 and open api

I hope the High-Level Server Frameworks can add support for http3 and open api features or not

Add performance benchmark

Benchmarks can be easily done with the examples that they included in the project source itself.

For most of the frameworks, we could just use (except a few weird crates that name it differently such as hello_world or hello):

git clone git_url
cd git_url
cargo run --example hello-world --release

And then on another terminal:

wrk http://localhost:3000

If we could, we could bump each repository and let them have a standard name hello-world with a standard port to simplifies things in the future. What I learned from benchmarking ~7 different frameworks? I am surprised that actix_web was the fastest even when lower level frameworks (hyper, tokio-tinyhttp, tokio-minihttp) is included and does not have routing.

By the way, it would be great if this was included in http://arewewebyet.org

Add Iced?

Iced is a cross platform gui framework. It targets all major platforms, including web.
Would you consider adding it to the list of front end web clients?
https://github.com/hecrj/iced

The comparison of high-level backend frameworks could include stable Rust

The list of high-level backend frameworks does not include a field for whether they work on stable Rust, like the frontend-frameworks list does. I think this would be a good improvement.