C vs Rust: Rating, Votes and Features
- License: C — Open standard; Rust — MIT or Apache-2.0.
- Paradigms: C — Procedural; Rust — Concurrent, Functional, Procedural.
- Memory management: C — Manual; Rust — Ownership and borrowing.
C — November 2026: 2 votes, rating 7.3/10.
Rust — November 2026: 4 votes, rating 7.5/10.
| C | Rust | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | programming language | programming language |
| Developer | ISO C committee (WG14) | Rust Foundation |
| Created by | Dennis Ritchie | Graydon Hoare |
| First release | 1972 | 2012 |
| License | Open standard | MIT or Apache-2.0 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| Website | https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14 | https://www.rust-lang.org |
| Paradigms | Procedural | Concurrent, Functional, Procedural |
| Typing | Static | Static |
| Type strength | Weak | Strong |
| Type inference | No | Yes |
| Memory management | Manual | Ownership and borrowing |
| Runs as | Native code | Native code |
| Main implementation | GCC, Clang, MSVC | rustc (LLVM) |
| Concurrency | Threads (C11 threads, POSIX threads), atomics | Threads, async/await, checked for data races |
| Null safety | No | Yes |
| Package manager | None | Cargo |
| Used for | Embedded, Systems | Back end, Embedded, Systems |
| Specification | ISO/IEC 9899 | The Ferrocene Language Specification, adopted by the Rust project in 2025 |