Building software in Rust has a lot of benefits, including performance improvements, memory safety, and modern features. However, Rust comes with its own set of challenges and costs, especially when it comes to rewriting existing software. In this post, you will learn about the most common and often overlooked costs of Rust development, and how to weigh them against the benefits.
Hidden Cost No. 1: Learning CurveLink to this section
Rust is a strictly typed language with a unique ownership model that can be difficult to grasp for developers coming from languages like Python, JavaScript, or even C++. To introduce an existing team to Rust, you will need to invest time in training and mentoring. This learning curve can slow down development initially, as developers may struggle with concepts like lifetimes, borrowing, and ownership.
Hidden Cost No. 2: Hiring and Retaining TalentLink to this section
According to the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (opens in a new tab), Rust is the most admired programming language, with 72.4% of surveyed developers who have used it wanting to continue using it, and 29.2% who desire to use it for the first time. However, this popularity does not translate into a large talent pool.
Despite the growing community, Rust is still a relatively new language, and there are fewer experienced developers available compared to more established languages like Python or JavaScript. This can make hiring and retaining talent a challenge, especially for companies that are not located in tech hubs or large metropolitan areas, or that cannot offer competitive salaries.
In addition to the scarcity of talent, the cost of hiring Rust developers is significantly higher than hiring developers for more common languages. According to recent surveys and numbers, this premium holds across markets, not just in the US.
The NumbersLink to this section
Compiled figures from Second Talent (opens in a new tab) put the US median salary for Rust at $170,000, second only to Solidity ($200,000) among the languages tracked, and about 36% higher than the $125,000 median for Python. The same compilation shows Rust pay growing roughly 12% year-over-year, the steepest curve on its list. Note that these are 2026 projected medians, derived from 2025 actuals plus an assumed 4–6% growth and blended from several underlying sources, so treat them as estimates rather than as measured figures from a single survey.
| Language | US Median Salary (2025) | Difference vs. Python |
|---|---|---|
| Solidity | $200,000 | +60.0% |
| Rust | $170,000 | +36.0% |
| Go | $155,000 | +24.0% |
| Scala | $150,000 | +20.0% |
| Elixir/Erlang | $145,000 | +16.0% |
| Ruby | $140,000 | +12.0% |
| Kotlin | $135,000 | +8.0% |
| Swift | $130,000 | +4.0% |
| TypeScript | $128,000 | +2.4% |
| Python | $125,000 | baseline |
Source: 2026 projected medians compiled by Second Talent (opens in a new tab), derived from 2025 actuals plus an assumed 4–6% growth. Second Talent attributes its figures to a blend of industry salary surveys, including the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (opens in a new tab) and the Dice 2025 Tech Salary Report (opens in a new tab); the underlying per-language breakdown is not independently published, so treat these as estimates from a single aggregator rather than measured medians.
The gap is not a US-only artifact. ITJobsWatch (opens in a new tab) data for the UK (6 months to August 2026) puts the median salary for Rust at £90,000, against £70,000 for Python, a 28.6% premium, even though Rust job postings account for only 0.28% of the UK permanent-job market versus 6.76% for Python: roughly 24x fewer openings chasing the higher pay.
| Country | Rust (annual) | Python / General Dev (annual) | Rust Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $170,000 (projected median) | $125,000 (projected median) | +36.0% |
| United Kingdom | £90,000 (median, ITJobsWatch) | £70,000 (median, ITJobsWatch) | +28.6% |
| Germany | €102,500 (average) | €70,000–€85,000 (typical backend average) | ~+25–35% |
| Switzerland | CHF 135,000 (average) | CHF 100,000–110,000 (typical backend average) | ~+25–30% |
| Poland | $81,372 (average) | $55,000–65,000 (typical backend average) | ~+30–40% |
Sources for the international rows: K&C, "International Rust developer salary and rate ranges" (opens in a new tab); Germany/Switzerland/Poland Python baselines are regional backend-developer averages compiled by the same report and cross-referenced against local job boards; treat these three rows as directional rather than as precisely matched surveys. Note that the Poland figures are quoted in US dollars, not in the local currency used for the German and Swiss rows.
Two caveats worth sitting with. First, these are correlation, not proof that Rust itself causes the premium: scarcity, not popularity, drives pay, and the small, self-selected pool of Rust developers skews senior and systems-level, the same reason Solidity outpays far-more-common languages. Second, the 2026 ITJobsWatch snapshot (opens in a new tab) shows the UK median for Rust fell 10% year-over-year even as Python fell 3.45%, a reminder that a small job pool makes median salary figures noisy from one reporting window to the next. Directionally, though, every source agrees: budgeting for a Rust rewrite means budgeting for a meaningfully more expensive hire, roughly a quarter to a third above what the equivalent Python or general backend role would cost.
Hidden Cost No. 3: Ecosystem MaturityLink to this section
When writing software in Python, JavaScript, or any other mature language, you can rely on a rich and reliable ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. Rust, while growing rapidly, still has a less mature ecosystem. This means that you may have to implement functionality from scratch that would otherwise be available in other languages with a single import statement. This usually leads to increased development time from already more expensive developers, and can also lead to more bugs and maintenance headaches down the line.
One example from personal experience: I developed this website in Rust using the Topcoat (opens in a new tab) framework. While Topcoat is a great framework, it is still relatively new (at least at the time of writing this post), and I had to implement a lot of functionality that would have been available out-of-the-box in more mature frameworks like Next.js. One major gap is that Topcoat does not have a built-in MDX parser, nor is there a community plugin for it. I had to implement my own MDX parser, which took a lot of time and effort. This is just one example of how ecosystem maturity can impact development time and cost. I opened a PR to contribute the MDX parser to the Topcoat framework (my PR (opens in a new tab) if you would like to check it).
Hidden Cost No. 4: The Weaker AI Coding ToolsLink to this section
AI coding agents, such as Claude Code and Codex, have undoubtedly changed the way we write software. These tools can help developers write code faster, and even help with debugging and testing. However, these tools are not as good in Rust as they are in more popular languages like Python and JavaScript. This is because the Large Language Models (LLMs) that power these tools are trained on a large corpus of code, and the amount of Rust code in that corpus is much smaller than the amount of Python or JavaScript code.
This means that AI coding agents are less effective in Rust, and developers may not be able to rely on them as much for code generation, debugging, and testing. This can lead to increased development time and cost, as developers may have to spend more time writing code manually and debugging issues that could have been caught by AI tools in other languages.
Hidden Cost No. 5: Compatibility and InteroperabilityLink to this section
When writing or rewriting a tool or a system in Rust, you may run into compatibility and interoperability issues with existing systems and libraries. Rust has a different memory model and type system than other languages, which can make it difficult to integrate with existing codebases. There are many bindings and FFI (Foreign Function Interface) libraries available for Rust, such as PyO3 (opens in a new tab) for Python and cxx (opens in a new tab) for C++, but these libraries may not cover all use cases, and may introduce additional overhead such as copying data between the two languages. This can lead to the slippery slope of starting to write one part of a system in Rust, only to find that you have to rewrite more and more of the system in Rust to avoid compatibility issues.
ConclusionLink to this section
Rust is a great language with many benefits, no doubt. However, there is never a free lunch in software engineering. Using Rust comes with its own set of costs and trade-offs as well. I hope that by sharing these hidden costs, dear reader, you will be able to make a more informed decision when considering writing or rewriting your software in Rust.