Rust developers criticize complexity and lack of support

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The results of the “State of Rust Survey 2025” are available: More and more developers are using Rust in their work environment, can increasingly work productively with it, and almost always use the current, stable release. However, only a slim majority of participants are satisfied with the pace at which Rust is developing. There are also concerns that Rust is becoming too complex, developers and maintainers receive too little support, and the programming language cannot establish itself in the corporate environment.

Productive work, preferably with the stable release

More than half of the respondents believe that Rust allows for productive work (56.8 percent). This continues a trend, as in the previous year's survey, 53.5 percent agreed with this statement, while in 2023, it was only 47 percent. The proportion of developers who use Rust daily has also slightly increased to 55.1 percent. Among the most frequently mentioned everyday problems, slow compilation (27.3 percent) and high memory requirements for target directories (22.2 percent) are at the forefront.

89.2 percent of Rust developers use the current stable release. Almost no one is concerned about upgrading, as 97.1 percent agree that switching to a new stable compiler version is very easy and requires only minor code adjustments at most.

Caution is advised with nightly upgrades, as 56.9 percent expect issues such as compiler errors. Nearly 31 percent explain why they use them anyway: they want to use a specific feature that is not yet available in the stable version. The nightly version is also used because a specific tool requires it (10.8 percent) or because of a crate dependency (8.5 percent).

Main Concerns: High Complexity and Lack of Support

Nearly 60 percent are satisfied with the pace at which Rust is developing. However, a quarter find it too slow, and 41.6 percent even believe that Rust is becoming too complex. 38.4 percent see the lack of support for developers and maintainers as a problem, a point that has actually increased in the survey compared to the previous year (35.4 percent). This clearly reflects a general feeling of being overwhelmed, which many project managers criticize, often now also in connection with increasing AI slop.

However, the top concern for the future is the fear that Rust will find too little use in the technology industry (42.1 percent). However, the survey also reveals a countertrend. In the corporate environment, Rust is increasingly being used for productive purposes (48.8 percent), a clear increase compared to 2023 and 2022, when 45.5 percent and 38.7 percent of respondents, respectively, made this observation. Furthermore, a quarter of participants state that their company wants to hire Rust developers. Last year, it was 22 percent, and in 2021, it was still 19.6 percent.

Most Popular Stable Features and a Wishlist

Among the stable features added in the past 12 months, developers most frequently use Let Chains (71.4 percent) and Async Closures (55.5 percent). Trait Upcasting ranks third with 28.1 percent. In contrast, features like Naked Functions, Strict Provenance API, and diagnostic::do_not_recommend are hardly needed.

For the next stable release, participants wish for features not yet implemented or reserved for nightly versions, such as generic const expressions, const trait methods, Stable ABI, and Portable SIMD, to be included.

VS Code Usage Declines

Visual Studio Code remains the most popular development environment for Rust, but its share continues to decline. In 2022, it was the editor of choice for 61.7 percent of developers; now, it's only 51.6 percent. For package managers and crate sources used, preferences are clearly divided. Rust developers use Cargo almost exclusively (97.5 percent) and primarily obtain their crates from crates.io (96.6 percent). Git repositories have also gained a significant share, used by 46.2 percent of participants.

Linux continues to be the OS of choice for Rust development (75.2 percent). macOS and Windows together account for 61.4 percent. A similar picture emerges for target platforms. Linux leads here with 88.4 percent, followed by Windows with 43.3 percent and macOS with 30.7 percent.

More Than 7000 Survey Participants

The online survey “State of Rust Survey 2025,” conducted by the Rust Survey Team, ran for 30 days from November 17 to December 17, 2025, and was available in ten languages. A total of 7156 developers answered the complete questionnaire, with a majority of 23.4 percent located in the USA. Participants from Germany followed in second place with 13.4 percent. France, Great Britain, and China share places three to five with a combined approximately 16 percent.

Overall, the answers largely differ only slightly from the 2024 survey, according to its authors. The Survey Team attributes the slightly lower participation compared to previous years to the larger number of surveys launched via the Rust blog in 2025.

All survey results are available on the Rust blog. The analysis is also available as a 59-page PDF report.

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