Go with axum, i's a lot easier to get into and the performance difference is negligible.
If you’re doing anything that involves a database, that timing is going to dominate your API performance.
Other consideration:
- Number of production apps using each library
- Maintenance story: who is fixing bugs, improving the library and how frequently?
- API ergonomics
Actix uses a pool of single thread tokio runtimes and axum just uses the multithread runtime. The multithread runtime does add a litte big overhead but in situations where the endpoints in the backend do generate not even loads when executing that can be better then a bunch of single thread runtimes.
Using actix-web adds complications because it is using its own actix-rt runtime. It is based on tokio but it does its own thing with threads which may cause some incompatibilities with other projects. Libraries like sqlx and sea-orm have feature flags to use this runtime but most other projects typically just support tokio only. You can run actix-web under the tokio runtime but then you lose support for actix actors and websockets.
$ docker compose -f db/dbContainer.yaml up
... check there is no error running the seed file
$ docker exec -it postgres1 psql -U postgres
postgres=# \l ... find list of databases
... confirm db_name1 exists
postgres=# \c db_name1
postgres=# \dt ... find all tables
... confirm the table generated from your seed file
postgres=# SELECT * FROM users;
$ docker volume create postgres1-data
$ docker run --name postgres1 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -e POSTGRES_USER=admin -e POSTGRES_DB=db_name1 -d -p 5431:5432 -v postgres1-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data postgres:latest
// Add table inside Docker Postgres one line at a time
$ docker exec -it postgres1 psql -U postgres
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE "db_name1";
postgres=# \l ... find list of databases
... confirm db_name1 exists
postgres=# \c db_name1 ... to connect
db_name1=# CREATE TABLE users(
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(255) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
occupation VARCHAR(255),
email VARCHAR(255) UNIQUE,
phone VARCHAR(32) UNIQUE,
priority INT,
balance Numeric(26, 18),
updated_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);
db_name1=# SELECT * FROM users;
postgres=# \dt ... find all tables
... confirm the table generated from your seed file
postgres=# \dt ... find all tables
postgres=# \q
$ cargo install sea-orm-cli
$ sea-orm-cli generate entity \
-u [YOUR POSTGRES SQLX URL] \
-o src/entities
in the Entity file, add use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize}; to that Model; And implement IntoResponse
$ docker stop postgres1
$ docker start postgres1
$ docker ps -a
$ docker stop postgres1
$ docker rm postgres1
$ docker ps -a
async-trait: Type erasure for async trait methods axum and axum-extra: web framework built with Tokio, Tower, and Hyper; Extra utilities for Axum
rust_decimal: included in SeaORM chrono: for DB timestamps ... included in SeaORM //time: to compliment chronos
dotenvy: A well-maintained fork of the dotenv jsonwebtoken: to make json web token lettre: sending emails serde and serde_json: to serialize and deserialize
sqlx: An async, pure Rust SQL toolkit featuring compile-time checked queries without a DSL. Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite.
tokio: async runtime from timer to networking tower: networking clients and servers tracing-subscriber: for collecting structured event logs uuid: for unique identifier validator: validation for data models
SeaORM https://github.com/SeaQL/sea-orm
Tokio https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum
Tonic for gRPC https://github.com/hyperium/tonic
Prost is a Protocol Buffers implementation for the Rust Language. https://github.com/tokio-rs/prost
gRPC UI is a command-line tool that lets you interact with gRPC servers via a browser. sort of like Postman, but for gRPC APIs instead of REST.
https://github.com/fullstorydev/grpcui
to install: brew install grpcui
grpcurl: Like cURL, but for gRPC: Command-line tool for interacting with gRPC servers https://github.com/fullstorydev/grpcurl
install terminator
install slumber http client
install just command runner
install Rust 1.87.0 (17067e9ac 2025-05-09)
install cargo-watch: cargo install cargo-watch
install protobuf: https://protobuf.dev/installation/
install gRPCurl: https://github.com/fullstorydev/grpcurl/releases
Start Terminator: just term
Run the server: just watch
Start Slumber to make requests: slumber
query-params-with-empty-strings customize-path-rejection get header request-id stream_reqwest_response(reqwest-response) parse-body-based-on-content-type(application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded) routes-and-handlers-close-together
//anyhow-error-response customize-extractor-error handle-head-request global-404-handler error-handling
consume-body-in-extractor-or-middleware
print-request-response tracing-aka-logging tls-graceful-shutdown testing dependency-injection
Tutorials https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum/blob/main/ECOSYSTEM.md#tutorials
Neon Postgres https://neon.tech/docs/guides/rust Shuttle Postgres https://docs.shuttle.dev/resources/shuttle-shared-db Render https://render.com/docs/deploy-rocket-rust
JWT, Socket, gRPC Socketioxide: Socket.io implementation in Rust I never thought I'd use Socket.io ever again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEhhWL1oUTM
Websockets | Rust | long lived Connections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4gV9nYEi_I Real-Time P2P File Transfer App with Rust(Axum), WebSockets & Next.js https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYwqo3CMGsU
Tonic makes gRPC in Rust stupidly simple https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kerKXChDmsE
Build a CRUD REST API with Rust Axum | Tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJsTgmayHZY&t=21s
Rust Axum Full Course - Web Development (GitHub repo updated to Axum 0.7) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZtlD_m59sM
Brook Build: Updating the Axum course to v0.8.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCPKGYD3vJk&list=PLrmY5pVcnuE-_CP7XZ_44HN-mDrLQV4nS&index=64
Tutorials: https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum/blob/main/ECOSYSTEM.md#tutorials
Using Rust, Axum, PostgreSQL, and Tokio to build a Blog https://spacedimp.com/blog/using-rust-axum-postgresql-and-tokio-to-build-a-blog/
Rust Axum Full Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZtlD_m59sM
Tonic makes gRPC in Rust stupidly simple https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kerKXChDmsE
Socket.io Socketioxide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEhhWL1oUTM
Deployment with Shuttle https://docs.shuttle.dev/examples/axum