2025 State of Rust Survey Results
Source: Rust Blog
Hello, Rust community!
Once again, the survey team is happy to share the results of the State of Rust survey, this year celebrating a round number – the 10th edition!
The survey ran for 30 days (from November 17 to December 17 2025) and collected 7 156 responses, a slight decrease compared to last year. In this blog post we will shine a light on some specific key findings. As usual, the full report is available for download.
Survey statistics
| Survey | Started | Completed | Completion rate | Views |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 9 | 4 507 | 310 | 77.4 % | 13 564 |
| 2025 9 | 3 897 | 156 | 76.2 % | 20 397 |
Overall, the answers we received this year match last year’s results closely; differences are often under a single percentage point. The number of respondents decreases slightly year‑over‑year. In 2025 we published multiple other surveys (e.g., the Compiler Performance survey and the Variadic Generics micro‑survey), which may have contributed to fewer completions of this (longer) survey. We plan to discuss whether to combine the State of Rust survey with the ongoing work on the Rust Vision Doc.
Note: These numbers should be taken in context – we cannot extrapolate too much from a mere 7 000 answers, and some optional questions received even fewer replies.
Below are some interesting pieces of data:
Screenshotting Rust use
People continue to develop using the stable compiler and keep up with releases, trusting our stability and compatibility guarantees. Nightly is used mainly out of necessity (e.g., for features that are not yet stabilized). Compared to last year (2024 report) we see fewer nightly users. This may not be a significant data point because we are looking at a sliding window of releases; differences could depend on many factors (e.g., a highly anticipated feature causing a temporary spike in nightly downloads).
One example is the very popular let‑chains and async‑closures features, which were stabilized last year.
We are also grateful to hear from people not using Rust (or who have stopped) when they tell us why they dropped the language. In most cases it seems to be a “see you again in the future” rather than a definitive “goodbye”.
Specific topics we investigated
-
Git‑based crate dependencies – how often people use a dependency specified as a Git repository, e.g.:
foo = { git = "https://github.com/foo/bar" } -
--explainusefulness – whether users find the output ofrustc --explainhelpful. Internal discussions suggested uncertainty, but the graph below contradicts that assumption: many Rust users actually do find compiler error‑code explanations useful.
Challenges and wishes about Rust
We landed long‑awaited features in 2025 (let chains and async closures), and the survey shows they are indeed very popular and often used – something to celebrate!
The most‑wanted upcoming features are now generic const expressions and improved trait methods. Most other desired features didn’t change significantly.
When asked about non‑trivial problems people encounter, the picture is similar to 2024:
- Resource usage (slow compile times and storage consumption) remains a top concern.
- Debugging slipped from 2nd to 4th place (≈ 2 pp drop). We have just started a dedicated Rust debugging survey to learn more.
Learning about Rust
There is a noticeable (~3 pp) shift in attendance for online vs. offline community events (meetups, forums, etc.). This hints that some people are moving their questions to LLM tooling, as the word‑cloud for open‑ended answers suggests.
Nevertheless, our online documentation remains the preferred canonical reference, followed by studying the code itself.
Industry and community
The hiring trend from organizations looking for more Rust developers continues upward. The steady growth may indicate a structural market presence of Rust in companies; codebases consolidate and the total quantity of Rust code keeps increasing.
As always, we try to gauge concerns about Rust’s future. Unsurprisingly, the majority of respondents would like even more Rust! At the same time, worries persist about the language becoming increasingly complex.
There is a slight uptick for “developer and maintainer support.” We are aware and are working on it. Ongoing efforts include:
- RustNL fund –
- Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund –
Funding should focus on retaining talent that might otherwise leave after a period of unpaid labor.
This graph is also a message to… (the original content ended abruptly; you may want to add the concluding sentence or graphic description here.)
Companies Using Rust
Please consider supporting Rust project contributors and the authors of the crates you use in your projects. You can help by:
- Joining the Rust Foundation.
- Allowing paid time for employees to work on Rust projects you benefit from.
- Funding through collective platforms such as
- Personal sponsorships (GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, or similar donation boxes).
Trust in the Rust Foundation is improving, which is definitely good to hear.
Trivia: Tools Used When Programming in Rust
We asked respondents which tools they use. Highlights:
- Zed saw a remarkable jump in preference (with Helix as a strong second).
- Editors with agentic support are on the rise (as the word cloud shows) and appear to be eroding the user base of VS Code and IntelliJ, according to the histogram.
- We’re happy to meet again the 11 developers still using Atom (hey 👋!) and salute those attached to classic editors like Emacs, Vim, or their derivatives.
Demographics Snapshot
A small group (17 %) of respondents shared personal information. In context:
- 8 % identify as LGBTQ+
- 6 % identify as women
Even though these numbers are only slightly better than last year, they still show that a very small percentage of marginalized groups are represented in our project. We are still doing better than many other tech communities, but this remains a reminder that one of our core values is to strive for a diverse and welcoming FOSS community for everyone. Achieving this requires continued effort on effective outreach programs.
Conclusions
- No big surprises; a few trends were confirmed.
If you want to dig deeper, feel free to download the PDF report.
We want to thank all the volunteers who helped shape and translate this survey, and all the participants who took the time to give us a picture of the Rust community.
A Look Back
Since this year we publish a round number. If you’d like a trip down memory lane, here are the blog posts with past survey results: