Rust vs C in 2026: 1,000x Fewer Bugs, Same Speed

C has run the world’s infrastructure since 1972. Rust showed up determined to take its job, one memory-safety bug at a time. In October 2026, that fight has stopped being theoretical. Google now ships roughly 5 million lines of Rust inside Android, the Linux kernel accepts Rust drivers in its mainline tree, and Rust just logged its first-ever appearance in the TIOBE Index top 10. Meanwhile C still powers the kernels, firmware, and compilers that Rust itself depends on to exist.

This comparison breaks down where Rust vs C actually stands today: current version numbers, independently reported benchmark and security data, real salary figures from three separate job-market sources, and the production systems that have already picked a side. No hype, no invented statistics, just what the two languages can verifiably do in 2026, as part of our broader coding tools coverage.

Why Rust vs C Is 2026’s Defining Systems-Programming Debate

For most of computing history, choosing a systems language meant choosing C. It compiled to lean machine code, ran on anything with a chip, and had decades of tooling built around it. Rust changed the calculus by offering C-level control over memory and hardware without a garbage collector, while catching entire classes of bugs at compile time instead of in production. That pitch used to sound academic. It no longer does.

The reason this debate has sharpened in 2026 is data, not opinion. Google’s security team has published multi-year vulnerability trend lines from Android showing memory-safety bugs falling as Rust’s share of new code rises. The Linux kernel has had Rust support in its mainline tree since version 6.1, and that support has kept expanding every release since. At the same time, C has posted its biggest year-over-year popularity gain in the TIOBE Index in years, a reminder that the installed base of C code, from embedded firmware to the Linux kernel itself, is not going anywhere soon.

Both things are true at once: Rust is winning new, security-sensitive greenfield work, and C remains the default for a staggering amount of existing and new low-level software. The rest of this article unpacks exactly how, with numbers pulled directly from the Rust project, GCC, the Linux kernel ecosystem, Google’s security blog, TIOBE, and Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey.

What makes the rust vs c question harder to answer in 2026 than it was five years ago is that both sides now have real production evidence instead of theory. Early Rust advocates argued from first principles: an ownership model should prevent certain bug classes, therefore it will. That argument was easy to dismiss as academic. It is much harder to dismiss a multi-year vulnerability trend line from a billion-device operating system, which is exactly what Google has now published. At the same time, C advocates no longer have to argue purely from inertia. C’s 2026 TIOBE gain shows the language’s ecosystem, tooling, and hiring pipeline are still expanding, not just coasting on legacy installs.

Rust vs C at a Glance: Spec-by-Spec Comparison

Before getting into benchmarks and adoption stories, here is how the two languages stack up on the fundamentals developers actually ask about when picking a systems language.

Attribute	C	Rust
First release	1972	2015 (1.0 stable)
Latest standard/version (Oct 2026)	C23 (ISO/IEC 9899:2024)	Rust 1.99.0 (Oct 1, 2026)
Memory management	Manual malloc/free	Ownership and borrow checker, no GC
Memory safety by default	No, relies on programmer discipline	Yes, in safe Rust code
Primary compilers	GCC, Clang/LLVM, MSVC	rustc (LLVM-backed)
Package manager	None built in (relies on system/vendor libs)	Cargo, with crates.io registry
Concurrency safety	Not enforced by the compiler	Data races rejected at compile time in safe code
TIOBE Index rank (Sept 2026)	#2, 10.28% share	#10, 1.34% share
Stack Overflow 2025 usage share	~19.1% of professional developers	~14.5-14.8% of professional developers
Stack Overflow “most admired” standing	Not top-ranked	Most admired language, ~72% admiration
Linux kernel status	Core language since the kernel’s inception	Mainlined since Linux 6.1, roughly 0.4% of codebase by 2026
Typical use cases	Kernels, firmware, embedded, compilers, legacy systems	Network services, CLI tools, new kernel drivers, WASM, crypto
Learning curve	Moderate syntax, high discipline required for safety	Steeper initial curve due to the borrow checker
License cost	Free, open compilers (GCC/Clang)	Free, open compiler and tooling

Two rows deserve a second look. C’s TIOBE share jumped 1.63 percentage points year over year to 10.28%, the language’s best showing in years, according to the TIOBE Index. Rust’s climb is smaller in absolute terms but historically bigger in significance: October 2026 marks the first time Rust has ever cracked the TIOBE top 10, up from position 18 just a year earlier.

What Is C? Five Decades of Systems Programming

C was designed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s to build Unix, and it succeeded so completely that it became the language nearly every other systems language gets measured against. Its model is deliberately minimal: a small set of keywords, direct access to pointers and memory addresses, and a standard library that stays out of the way. The tradeoff for that minimalism is that the compiler trusts the programmer completely. Buffer overruns, use-after-free errors, and dangling pointers are all legal C code right up until they crash a server or open a security hole.

The language standard keeps moving. C23, formally published as ISO/IEC 9899:2024, is the current standard, and GCC 15.1 became the first major compiler release to support it when it shipped in May 2025. GCC’s 15-series has kept receiving maintenance updates since, with GCC 15.3 landing June 12, 2026, according to the GCC release page. Clang and LLVM have taken the same incremental path: Clang 19.1.0 (September 2024) and Clang 20.1.0 (March 2025) both added C23 language-mode support, though neither claims full conformance with every corner of the standard.

What keeps C relevant in 2026 is not nostalgia. It is the sheer size of what already runs on it: the Linux kernel’s core, most embedded firmware, device drivers, and the compilers and runtimes that higher-level languages, including Rust, ultimately depend on. Rewriting that footprint is not a weekend project, and in many regulated industries (automotive, aerospace, medical devices) the certified toolchains and decades of static-analysis tooling built around C make it the path of least resistance even when a newer language would be objectively safer for brand-new code.

C’s ecosystem also benefits from a kind of institutional memory that a younger language cannot replicate on any timeline. Static analyzers like Coverity and Clang’s own analyzer have been tuned against C’s quirks for twenty-plus years. Fuzzing frameworks, sanitizers, and debuggers all treat C as a first-class citizen because the entire discipline of memory-safety tooling grew up specifically to compensate for C’s lack of built-in guarantees. That tooling maturity is a real, if often overlooked, part of why C teams can ship safety-critical code today even without a borrow checker: the safety net exists, it is just bolted on externally rather than built into the compiler.

What Is Rust? Memory Safety Without a Garbage Collector

Rust started as a Mozilla Research project and hit its 1.0 stable release in 2015, with the explicit goal of giving systems programmers C- and C++-level performance while eliminating the memory bugs that have caused the majority of serious security vulnerabilities in C and C++ software for decades. It does this through an ownership model enforced by the compiler’s borrow checker: every value has exactly one owner, references are tracked at compile time, and code that could cause a use-after-free, double-free, or data race simply fails to compile.

Rust is not the only newer systems language chasing C’s territory, though it has the deepest production track record; see our Zig vs Rust comparison for how a leaner alternative stacks up. Rust itself ships new stable releases on a regular cadence, and the most recent, Rust 1.99.0, landed October 1, 2026, stabilizing C-variadic function support, a feature systems programmers had been asking for to simplify calling conventions when interfacing with C libraries, according to release documentation on doc.rust-lang.org. That release followed 1.98.1 (September 3, 2026) and 1.97.1 (July 16, 2026), which fixed an LLVM-related miscompilation bug, and 1.96.1 (June 30, 2026), which patched three CVEs affecting a bundled libssh2 dependency in Cargo’s own tooling, a small but telling reminder that no language is immune to supply-chain risk even when its core memory model is safe.

How Rust’s Borrow Checker Actually Works

The clearest way to see the difference is side by side. Here is a classic use-after-free bug in C, legal code that compiles cleanly and fails at runtime:

#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void) {
    int *data = malloc(sizeof(int));
    *data = 42;
    free(data);
    // Bug: data is used after being freed.
    // The compiler will not stop this.
    int value = *data;
    return value;
}

The equivalent attempt in Rust fails to compile, catching the bug before it ever ships:

fn main() {
    let data = Box::new(42);
    drop(data);
    // Error: `data` was moved and dropped above.
    // rustc rejects this at compile time.
    let value = *data;
    println!("{}", value);
}

That compile-time rejection is the entire value proposition of safe Rust in one example. The C version is a valid program that a fuzzer, sanitizer, or production incident might eventually catch. The Rust version never leaves the developer’s machine.

Performance and Popularity: Benchmark Data From 3 Sources

Raw speed claims about Rust vs C should be treated carefully. Both languages compile through LLVM-class optimizing backends, and well-optimized C and well-optimized Rust routinely land in the same performance class on CPU-bound workloads. Differences that show up in specific benchmarks usually trace back to allocation strategy, bounds-check elision, or library quality rather than anything inherent to the language. What is measurable, and what three independent sources actually report, is adoption, popularity, and trust, which is arguably the more useful signal for anyone deciding where to invest learning time in 2026.

Benchmark and adoption data from three independent sources, as of September-October 2026

Metric	C	Rust	Source
Popularity index rank	#2 (10.28%)	#10 (1.34%), first-ever top-10 finish	TIOBE Index, September 2026
Professional developer usage share	~19.1%	~14.5-14.8%	Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey
“Most admired” language ranking	Not in the top tier	#1, ~72% admiration, multiple years running	Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey
Memory-safety vulnerability density (Android)	Baseline, roughly 1,000x higher than Rust	~0.2 bugs per million lines shipped	Google Security Blog / blog.google, 2025

Read together, the pattern is consistent, and it mirrors what shows up when Rust is measured against other modern languages rather than C specifically; our Rust vs Go breakdown and Python vs Rust benchmarks both found the same admiration-over-raw-adoption pattern. C remains far more widely used in absolute terms, which makes sense given how much existing infrastructure runs on it. Rust is used by a smaller slice of developers but inspires dramatically more loyalty among the people who do use it, and its security track record in a shipping consumer operating system is the strongest hard evidence either language has produced this decade. That last point deserves its own section, because the numbers behind it are the single biggest argument in the entire Rust vs C debate.

Memory Safety and Security: The 1,000x Vulnerability Gap

Google’s security team estimates that roughly 70% of severe vulnerabilities in memory-unsafe codebases trace back to memory-safety bugs, a figure the company reiterated in its October 2024 “Safer with Google” post on advancing memory safety across its products. That estimate lines up with years of Microsoft Security Response Center data pointing at memory-safety defects as the dominant root cause of the vulnerabilities it patches. Android gives the clearest real-world test of what happens when an organization acts on that data at scale.

Share of Android security vulnerabilities attributable to memory-safety bugs

Year	Memory-safety share of Android vulnerabilities	Context
2019	76%	Before Android prioritized memory-safe languages for new code
2024	24%	After several years of writing new Android code primarily in Rust and Java/Kotlin
2025	Below 20% (first time)	Android reports ~5 million lines of Rust in production, per Google

Google’s own explanation for the drop is not that it rewrote Android’s existing C and C++ codebase in Rust. It explicitly did not. Instead, the Android team adopted a strategy of writing new code in memory-safe languages going forward while leaving mature, already-stable C and C++ components in place, as detailed in the company’s September 2024 “Eliminating Memory Safety Vulnerabilities at the Source” post. That “memory safety at the margin” approach is why the vulnerability share kept falling even though the bulk of Android’s codebase, measured in lines, is still C and C++.

The density figure is the number worth remembering. Google reported finding just one potential memory-safety vulnerability across roughly 5 million lines of Rust code in Android, working out to about 0.2 bugs per million lines, a density the company describes as roughly 1,000 times lower than Android’s C and C++ code, according to its “Rust in Android: move fast and fix things” update. That is not a benchmark of raw execution speed. It is a benchmark of how often each language lets a serious security bug slip through to production, and on that specific metric, the gap between Rust and C in Google’s own data is not close.

Compile Times, Tooling, and Developer Experience

C’s build story is simple because the language itself is simple. A typical C project compiles with GCC or Clang through a Makefile or CMake script, with no mandatory dependency manager and no standardized package registry. That minimalism keeps individual compile units fast, though large C projects without disciplined header management can still suffer from slow full rebuilds.

Rust’s build story runs through Cargo, which handles dependency resolution, builds, tests, and publishing to the crates.io registry in one tool. The tradeoff developers consistently report is that Rust’s compiler does more work per build, running full borrow-checker analysis and (often) LLVM optimization passes, which tends to make Rust compile times longer than equivalent C builds, especially in debug mode on large codebases. Incremental compilation, caching, and tools like sccache have narrowed that gap considerably since Rust’s early years, but C’s compiler simplicity still gives it an edge on raw build speed for comparable project sizes.

Here is the same trivial dependency declaration in each ecosystem’s native format:

# Cargo.toml - Rust
[package]
name = "demo"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

[dependencies]
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }

# Makefile - C, with a manually vendored or system-installed library
CC = gcc
CFLAGS = -std=c23 -Wall -Wextra -O2
LIBS = -ljansson

demo: main.c
	$(CC) $(CFLAGS) main.c -o demo $(LIBS)

The difference is not just syntax. Cargo guarantees reproducible dependency versions through its lockfile and a central registry. C developers either vendor source directly into the project, rely on a system package manager like apt or vcpkg, or manage dependencies by hand, a flexibility that cuts both ways depending on how disciplined the team is.

Concurrency is where the gap between the two languages shows up most sharply in day-to-day development. C gives developers threads, mutexes, and atomics through POSIX or platform-specific APIs, but the compiler enforces nothing about how they are used. Forgetting to lock a mutex before touching shared state compiles perfectly and may run correctly for months before a race condition surfaces under load, often in production rather than in testing. Rust’s compiler tracks which data is shared across threads through its Send and Sync traits, and code that could create a data race simply will not compile, the same way code with a use-after-free will not compile. Developers moving from C to Rust consistently describe this as the single biggest shift in how they write concurrent code: the compiler becomes a reviewer that catches an entire category of bugs before a test suite ever runs.

The Real Cost of Choosing Rust vs C in 2026

Neither language charges a licensing fee. GCC, Clang, and rustc are all free and open source, so the real cost difference between Rust and C shows up in hiring, training time, and the salaries commanded by developers who know each language well. Multiple 2026 job-market sources show the two languages landing in a surprisingly similar pay band, with Rust’s smaller, more specialized talent pool pulling slightly ahead at the senior end.

US annual salary estimates by source, 2026

Source	C developer salary	Rust developer salary	Period
ZipRecruiter	$117,437 average (“C Programming”)	$109,905 average	June-September 2026
Indeed	$111,005 average base	Not separately listed	Updated April 2026, 36-month window
Salary.com	$135,360 average base ($145,885 with incentives)	Not separately listed	September 2026
course.careers compensation data	Not separately listed	$130,000-$170,000 range, “high demand, limited supply”	2026

The honest read of this table is that there is no clean, single-number winner. C salary estimates vary by roughly $24,000 depending on which job board you trust, which is itself a sign of how loosely “C developer” gets defined across postings that often blend C, C++, and embedded work. Rust’s narrower band reflects a more concentrated set of roles, frequently at companies doing infrastructure, blockchain, or security-sensitive work, such as AWS Nitro, Cloudflare Workers, and Solana Labs, where specialized Rust skills carry a premium even if the headline average sits close to C’s.

The cost that is easier to measure cleanly is hiring pool size. With roughly 22% of professional developers reporting C usage against roughly 14.5-14.8% for Rust in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, finding a competent C hire remains meaningfully easier than finding a competent Rust hire, which is its own real cost even before salary enters the conversation.

Real-World Adoption: Where Rust Is Replacing C in 2026

Numbers only tell half the story. Here are five concrete places where the Rust vs C decision has already been made, and what each organization chose.

Android (Google): New platform code, including media codecs and networking components, is written primarily in Rust going forward, while the existing C and C++ base stays in place. Roughly 5 million lines of Rust now ship inside Android, per Google’s security team.
The Linux kernel: Rust support merged into mainline starting with Linux 6.1 in December 2022 and has expanded with every release since, covering select drivers and subsystem abstractions. Independent estimates put Rust at roughly 0.4% of the kernel’s total codebase as of 2026, still a minority, but a permanent and growing one.
AWS infrastructure: Amazon’s Firecracker microVM technology, which underpins AWS Lambda and Fargate, and the Bottlerocket container-optimized operating system are both built in Rust, chosen specifically for the memory-safety guarantees in security-critical virtualization and OS layers.
Cloudflare’s edge network: Cloudflare built Pingora, the Rust-based proxy framework that replaced large parts of its NGINX-based edge infrastructure, citing memory safety and performance under high concurrency as the deciding factors.
Microsoft Windows components: Microsoft has publicly discussed and shipped Rust implementations of select low-level Windows components, including parts of the font and kernel-adjacent code, as part of a broader push to reduce memory-safety vulnerabilities in a decades-old C and C++ codebase.

Even curl, one of the most widely deployed pieces of C software on the planet, now supports pluggable Rust-based TLS backends such as rustls as an alternative to OpenSSL, giving operators a memory-safe option without requiring a full rewrite of curl’s core C codebase. That pattern, bolting memory-safe components onto a stable C core rather than rewriting everything, is the realistic shape Rust vs C migrations are taking across the industry in 2026.

What ties all five examples together is the absence of a full rewrite anywhere on the list. Android kept its C/C++ core. The Linux kernel kept its scheduler and memory manager in C. Cloudflare’s Pingora replaced a proxy layer, not the company’s entire network stack. Even Microsoft’s Windows work targets specific components rather than the operating system wholesale. The pattern across every serious 2026 Rust adoption story is the same: isolate the highest-risk, most security-sensitive surface, port that surface to Rust, and leave the rest of a proven C codebase exactly where it is.

Rust vs C for Embedded Systems and Kernel Development

Embedded and kernel work is where C’s advantages are hardest to argue away. Decades-old toolchains, vendor SDKs, and safety certifications (ISO 26262 for automotive, DO-178C for avionics) are built around C, and switching languages can mean re-earning certification from scratch, a cost that dwarfs any memory-safety benefit for a team shipping a mature, already-audited product. C’s predictable, GC-free execution model and its presence on every microcontroller toolchain in existence keep it the default choice for new embedded projects in regulated industries.

Inside the Linux kernel specifically, Rust’s role is narrower but real. The kernel’s Rust support covers new drivers and select subsystem bindings rather than a rewrite of core subsystems like the scheduler or memory manager, which remain C and are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Kernel maintainers who champion Rust-for-Linux frame it as risk reduction for new driver code specifically, the area of the kernel historically most prone to memory-safety bugs, not as a replacement strategy for the kernel’s existing C core.

For greenfield embedded projects without legacy certification baggage, Rust’s embedded ecosystem (the embedded-hal traits, RTIC for real-time interrupt-driven concurrency, and growing support across ARM Cortex-M and RISC-V targets) has matured enough by 2026 that teams building new IoT firmware increasingly default to it, particularly when the device handles network input and the cost of a remote memory-safety exploit is high.

The honest caveat is toolchain maturity outside the mainstream targets. A team shipping firmware for a widely used ARM Cortex-M part will find Rust support solid in 2026. A team targeting an obscure 8-bit microcontroller from a vendor that only ships a proprietary C compiler will likely find no practical Rust path at all, which is why C remains the universal fallback for embedded work regardless of how mature Rust’s tooling gets on any individual platform.

Migration Guide: Moving a C Codebase Toward Rust

Nobody rewrites a mature C codebase in Rust overnight, and nobody serious should try. The realistic path, the one Android, AWS, and Microsoft all independently converged on, is incremental. Here is the sequence that works in practice.

Audit first, don’t guess. Run fuzzers and sanitizers (AFL++, libFuzzer, AddressSanitizer) against the existing C codebase to find out where memory-safety bugs actually cluster before deciding what to port.
Target boundary-facing code first. Parsers, codecs, and anything that touches untrusted network or file input carry the highest risk and the highest payoff from porting to Rust.
Set up FFI tooling early. Use bindgen to generate Rust bindings from existing C headers, and cbindgen to generate C headers from Rust if other components still need to call into it.
Port leaf functions bottom-up. Convert small, self-contained functions with few callers before touching anything load-bearing, following the strangler-fig pattern rather than a big-bang rewrite.
Wire Rust into the existing build system. Tools like corrosion or cargo-c let CMake-based or Make-based C projects link against Cargo-built static libraries without abandoning the existing build.
Add Rust-specific CI gates. Run cargo clippy for lint checks and cargo miri to catch undefined behavior in unsafe blocks before merging any ported module.
Fuzz the ported code too. Memory safety from the borrow checker does not cover logic bugs; keep running the same fuzz targets against the new Rust module that you ran against the old C one.
Track binary size and startup time. Rust binaries can grow larger than equivalent C binaries due to monomorphization and bundled dependencies; measure this early, especially on embedded targets with tight flash budgets.
Train incrementally, not all at once. Pair experienced C developers with the first few Rust modules rather than mandating a team-wide switch before anyone has shipped production Rust code.
Expand only after the first module survives a release cycle. Let the first ported component run in production through at least one full release before greenlighting the next.

Pros and Cons: Rust vs C Side by Side

Rust: Pros and Cons

Pro: Memory and thread safety enforced at compile time in safe code, with no garbage collector overhead.
Pro: Cargo gives a unified, reproducible build and dependency system out of the box.
Pro: Most admired language in Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, which correlates with easier retention once teams adopt it.
Con: Steeper learning curve, especially the borrow checker, for developers coming from C, C++, or garbage-collected languages.
Con: Generally longer compile times than equivalent C builds, particularly in debug mode on large codebases.
Con: Smaller hiring pool, roughly 14.5-14.8% of developers vs C’s 22%, making recruitment harder.

C: Pros and Cons

Pro: Universal toolchain support, every embedded platform, kernel, and legacy system has a working C compiler.
Pro: Minimal language surface keeps compile times fast and the mental model simple.
Pro: Decades of certified toolchains for regulated industries (automotive, aerospace, medical) that would be expensive to re-certify in a new language.
Con: No compile-time memory safety; roughly 70% of severe vulnerabilities in memory-unsafe codebases trace back to memory-safety bugs, per Google’s security research.
Con: No built-in package manager or dependency resolution, leaving teams to vendor or manage libraries manually.
Con: No compiler-enforced protection against data races in concurrent code.

5 Use Cases: When to Pick Rust vs When to Pick C

The right answer depends heavily on what is being built and what already exists. Here are five concrete scenarios and the call each one points toward.

New network-facing service parsing untrusted input: Choose Rust. Parsers and codecs handling attacker-controlled data are exactly where memory-safety bugs turn into remote exploits, and this is the category Google’s Android data shows the clearest improvement from.
Brownfield embedded firmware with existing safety certification: Choose C. Re-certifying a product under DO-178C or ISO 26262 in a new language costs far more than any safety gain, unless the project is starting from zero.
New Linux kernel driver for modern hardware: Consider Rust. The kernel’s mainline Rust support exists specifically to reduce memory-safety risk in exactly this category of code, and Rust-for-Linux maintainers actively support new driver contributions.
Command-line developer tooling: Choose Rust. Cargo’s packaging story and the language’s growing CLI ecosystem (clap, ratatui) make it a strong default for new internal tools, with no legacy codebase to interoperate with; see our step-by-step Rust CLI tutorial for a working starting point.
Porting an existing, stable game engine core for a legacy console SDK: Choose C (or C++). Console vendor SDKs and their certified toolchains are built around C/C++, and a rewrite buys little when the existing code is already battle-tested.

The Verdict: Rust vs C in 2026

C is not losing. It still sits at #2 in the TIOBE Index with its biggest year-over-year gain in recent memory, it is used by roughly 22% of professional developers per Stack Overflow, and it remains the only realistic choice for enormous categories of existing and new embedded, firmware, and legacy systems work. Anyone predicting C’s disappearance in 2026 is reading the data wrong.

What has changed is that Rust no longer needs to win on popularity to win on merit. Google’s Android numbers are the clearest piece of evidence either language has produced this decade: a roughly 1,000-fold lower memory-safety vulnerability density in Rust code, measured in a production operating system running on billions of devices, not a lab benchmark. That evidence is why the Linux kernel accepted Rust into its mainline tree, why AWS built Firecracker and Bottlerocket in Rust, and why Cloudflare rebuilt its edge proxy around it.

The practical verdict for 2026: default to C when working inside an existing C codebase, a certified embedded toolchain, or a performance-critical path where the team already has deep C expertise. Default to Rust for new, security-sensitive software that touches untrusted input, especially network services, parsers, and new kernel drivers, where the cost of a memory-safety bug in production is high and the team has runway to absorb Rust’s steeper learning curve. Most organizations shipping serious systems software in 2026 are not choosing one language forever. They are running both, and the data above explains exactly why.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Rust faster than C?

Not inherently. Well-optimized C and well-optimized Rust typically land in the same performance class because both compile through LLVM-class backends. Differences that show up in specific benchmarks usually come from allocation strategy, bounds-check handling, or library quality rather than the language itself. Rust’s real, measurable advantage in 2026 is security, not raw speed.

Is Rust replacing C in the Linux kernel?

No. Rust has been supported in the Linux kernel’s mainline tree since version 6.1, but it covers select new drivers and subsystem abstractions, estimated at roughly 0.4% of the kernel’s codebase as of 2026. The kernel’s core, including the scheduler and memory manager, remains C.

Which language should a beginner learn first, Rust or C?

C is generally easier to start writing, since its syntax and mental model are smaller, though that simplicity means mistakes compile silently and fail at runtime. Rust has a steeper initial learning curve because of the borrow checker, but that same checker teaches memory-management discipline the compiler enforces rather than one you have to build through experience and debugging.

Do Rust and C developers earn different salaries?

Broad averages are close. ZipRecruiter reported an average of $109,905 for Rust developers and $117,437 for “C Programming” roles in 2026, while Indeed and Salary.com put C developer averages between $111,005 and $135,360 depending on methodology. Specialized Rust roles at infrastructure and blockchain companies can command a premium above these broad averages.

Can Rust and C code work together in the same project?

Yes, through Rust’s foreign function interface. Tools like bindgen generate Rust bindings from existing C headers, and cbindgen generates C-compatible headers from Rust code, letting teams mix the two languages in the same binary. This is exactly how Android, curl’s rustls backend, and most real-world Rust migrations actually work.

Why is C still gaining popularity if Rust is considered safer?

Popularity indexes like TIOBE measure search and discussion volume tied to existing code and job demand, not which language is best for new, security-sensitive projects. C’s enormous installed base in embedded systems, legacy infrastructure, and the tooling other languages depend on keeps demand for C expertise high even as new network-facing software increasingly defaults to memory-safe alternatives.

What is the biggest practical reason to choose C over Rust in 2026?

Existing certified toolchains and codebases. Industries like automotive and aerospace have spent years and significant budget certifying C toolchains under standards like ISO 26262 and DO-178C. Re-certifying the same work in Rust would cost far more than any memory-safety benefit, which keeps C the default for teams operating inside those regulatory environments.