CPython VS RustPython

Compare CPython vs RustPython and see what are their differences.

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CPython RustPython
1,555 106
70,429 20,927
1.2% 1.1%
10.0 9.9
2 days ago 4 days ago
Python Rust
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

CPython

Posts with mentions or reviews of CPython. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-12-13.
  • What's New in Python 3.15
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Dec 2025
    Here's the relevant diff: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/137968/files#diff-966...

    Search is limited to 20 attributes and non-descriptors only to avoid arbitrary code execution.

    I assume constructing AttributeErrors isn't highly performance sensitive.

  • Ask HN: How do you handle release notes for multiple audiences?
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Dec 2025
    If there is an audience for release notes I haven't seen anything better than just committing entries to pre-release folder as you change things and have release automation compile the folder into the actual release notes. Python and many other large projects handle it like this: https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/main/Misc/NEWS.d/next (The release notes for major releases are crafted manually)
  • Guide - Audio Modding of "Arena of Valor"
    6 projects | dev.to | 5 Dec 2025
    Python Software Foundation. Python Programming Language. https://www.python.org/
  • How to Send an Email in Python
    1 project | dev.to | 4 Dec 2025
    import smtplib from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart from email.mime.base import MIMEBase from email import encoders # SMTP Server details port = 587 smtp_server = "smtp.sendlayer.net" username = "paulie" # Your username generated by SendLayer password = "sendlayer_smtp_password" # Your password generated by SendLayer sender_email = "paulie@example.com" receiver_email = "johndoe@example.com" # Email content subject = "Email Example with Attachment" html_message = """\ Hi, This is a test email sent from "https://www.python.org">Python using "https://sendlayer.com">SendLayer's SMTP server The email also includes an attachment """ # Create a multipart message and set headers message = MIMEMultipart() message["From"] = sender_email message["Subject"] = subject message["To"] = receiver_email # Attach the HTML part message.attach(MIMEText(html_message, "html")) # Specify the file path for the attachment filename = "./path/to/attachment/file.pdf" # Change this to the correct path # Open the file in binary mode with open(filename, "rb") as attachment: part = MIMEBase("application", "octet-stream") part.set_payload(attachment.read()) # Encode file in ASCII characters to send by email encoders.encode_base64(part) # Add header as key/value pair to attachment part part.add_header("Content-Disposition", f"attachment; filename= {filename}") # Add attachment to message message.attach(part) # Send the email with smtplib.SMTP(smtp_server, port) as server: server.starttls() server.login(username, password) server.sendmail(sender_email, receiver_email, message.as_string()) print('Email sent successfully')
  • Python Concurrency: A Guide to Threads, Processes, and Asyncio
    3 projects | dev.to | 25 Nov 2025
    import requests from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor URLS = [ "https://www.python.org/", "https://www.djangoproject.com/", "https://flask.palletsprojects.com/", ] def fetch_url(url: str): print(f"Fetching {url}...") response = requests.get(url) print(f"Fetched {url} with status {response.status_code}") return len(response.content) with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor: # The map function runs `fetch_url` for each item in URLS results = executor.map(fetch_url, URLS) for url, length in zip(URLS, results): print(f"URL: {url}, Length: {length}")
  • Type hints in Python (4)
    2 projects | dev.to | 25 Nov 2025
    Use KeysView and ValuesView instead of dict_keys and dict_values respectively because type checkers don't support dict_keys and dict_values in _collections_abc.
  • Optimize Python Sorting with One Little Trick
    1 project | dev.to | 19 Nov 2025
    According to the benchmark in the PR that introduced this optimization, sorting a list that consists only of floats rather than a list of floats with even a single integer at the end is almost twice as fast.
  • How to Use UUIDv7 in Python, Django and PostgreSQL
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Nov 2025
    If you want to a UUIDv7 key for partitioning your table by date (e.g., one partition per day or month), you need to be able to compute the partition range via the minimal UUIDv7 for a given date.

    There is some discussion whether or not to add helpers for this to Python‘s uuid7 module: https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/130843#issuecomment...

  • How often does Python allocate?
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Nov 2025
    With respect to tagged pointers, there seems to be some recent movements on that front in CPython: https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/132509
  • Python: Is_dir() returns False when called from a path.relative_to(root) result
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Oct 2025

RustPython

Posts with mentions or reviews of RustPython. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-10-13.
  • Pre-PEP: Rust for CPython
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Nov 2025
    Interesting proposal, but with severe risks: becoming dependent on a single specific compiler and rustc could include malicious code that isn’t obvious to an outside auditor. See https://aeb.win.tue.nl/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html Ken Thompson demonstrated this.

    But what will the future of RustPython be? https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython/

    Major shifts like this are complex, not so only from a technical perspective but even more because a lot of humans with different opinions are involved. But radical changes are sometimes needed to be innovative again.

  • RustPython: A Python Interpreter Written in Rust
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Oct 2025
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Aug 2024
  • Fil's Unbelievable Garbage Collector
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Sep 2025
  • WasiPy – Python Interpreter in Wasi
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Sep 2025
    I have been experimenting with WebAssembly/Wasi over the last couple of years and decided it would be time to have another look and see what the state of things is. I it would be interesting to try and embed python in a wasm component for its nice sandbox properties.

    There's a super cool project https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython which is a python interpreter in rust which can compile to wasip2 so I hooked that up and it seems to work well.

    Its easy to build wasi components in rust now with the wasip2 target, excited to see where things head over the next few years.

  • From Async/Await to Virtual Threads
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Jul 2025
    Totally agree, the FFI escape hatch and excellent tooling from rust, maturin pyo3 etc means so many python problems can just be solved with rust. Which begs the question, has anyone tried doing a greenthread implementation in rust? Maybe offload some of the dynamically evaled python code to a seperate process maybe with https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython
  • Uv overtakes Poetry (for Wagtail users)
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Mar 2025
  • 关于低谷 - FAV0周刊 #10
    5 projects | dev.to | 11 Aug 2024
    RustPython
  • This Week In Python
    5 projects | dev.to | 9 Aug 2024
    RustPython – Python Interpreter written in Rust
  • Encapsulation in Rust and Python
    4 projects | dev.to | 5 Apr 2024
    Integrating Rust into Python, Edward Wright, 2021-04-12 Examples for making rustpython run actual python code Calling Rust from Python using PyO3 Writing Python inside your Rust code — Part 1, 2020-04-17 RustPython, RustPython Rust for Python developers: Using Rust to optimize your Python code PyO3 (Rust bindings for Python) Musing About Pythonic Design Patterns In Rust, Teddy Rendahl, 2023-07-14

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CPython and RustPython you can also consider the following projects:

git - A fork of Git containing Windows-specific patches.

pyodide - Pyodide is a Python distribution for the browser and Node.js based on WebAssembly

ipython - Official repository for IPython itself. Other repos in the IPython organization contain things like the website, documentation builds, etc.

PyO3 - Rust bindings for the Python interpreter

node - Node.js JavaScript runtime ✨🐢🚀✨

rust-numpy - PyO3-based Rust bindings of the NumPy C-API

Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
getstream.io
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InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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Did you know that Python is
the 2nd most popular programming language
based on number of references?