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Azure for Rust developers: Build cloud applications

Azure is a cloud platform that empowers Rust developers to build, deploy, and manage high-performance applications. Learn how Azure's hosting options and services can enhance your Rust development experience.

If you're new to cloud development, explore these resources to get familiar with Azure:

Rust in the cloud ecosystem: Benefits and use cases

Rust is gaining momentum for cloud applications thanks to its performance, reliability, and safety guarantees. While cloud platforms traditionally focused on JavaScript, Python, Java, and .NET, Rust offers compelling advantages:

  • Performance with safety: Zero-cost abstractions and memory safety make Rust ideal for high-performance cloud services
  • Low resource usage: Minimal runtime overhead and efficient memory management reduce cloud costs
  • Cross-platform compatibility: Write once, deploy anywhere capabilities work seamlessly with cloud-native approaches
  • Growing ecosystem: Robust libraries for web servers, async I/O, serialization, and more

Azure provides multiple integration points for Rust applications through both the Azure SDK for Rust and standard protocols like HTTP for REST APIs. Use Azure services with your Rust applications regardless of where they're hosted.

Note

The Azure SDK for Rust requires Rust edition 2021 or later and supports Rust 1.67.0 or newer versions.

Rust and other languages: Unique advantages

Azure supports many programming languages for cloud development. While Rust is still emerging in the Azure ecosystem, it brings unique advantages:

  • Memory safety without garbage collection
  • Thread safety and powerful concurrency
  • High performance with low resource usage
  • Strong type system and ownership model
  • Cross-platform compatibility

Access Azure services from your Rust applications through the Azure SDK for Rust, REST APIs, or custom handlers for specific services.

Azure services

Azure offers a vast range of cloud services that you can use independently or together in your Rust applications.

Key service categories for Rust developers include:

Create Azure services: Quickstart Center guide

Start your Azure journey by creating a free account, then visit the Quickstart Center in the Azure portal.

Find connection information on each service's page in the Azure portal to access your resources from your code.

Pricing tiers

Pricing tiers determine how your resource is billed. Use the Azure pricing calculator to estimate costs for your resources.

Free tier resources

When using the free (F0) pricing tier, keep these limitations in mind:

  • Your subscription may allow only one free resource per service. If you can't create a free resource, you may already have one in your subscription
  • Free tiers have limits on transactions per second (TPS) or transactions per month (TPM)
  • Exceeding these limits results in HTTP errors with quota-exceeded messages
  • For higher-volume applications, create multiple resources and use a single endpoint to distribute traffic

Set up your development environment

Set up these tools for the best Rust on Azure development experience:

Use Azure SDK for Rust crates

Access Azure services programmatically with the Azure SDK for Rust crates, where each crate provides service-specific connection capabilities.

These crates offer an idiomatic Rust API following the Azure SDK Guidelines with features like:

  • Authentication with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD)
  • Automatic retries with exponential back-off
  • Logging and distributed tracing
  • Cancellation support
  • Full async/await support

Run your Rust code anywhere: locally, in hybrid environments, or in the cloud—while interacting with Azure services through the SDK.

Deploy Rust apps to Azure

When hosting Rust applications on Azure, choose between two main approaches:

  1. Compile to binaries: Build your Rust application into native binaries and deploy directly to appropriate hosting services

  2. Containerization: Package your application in containers for deployment to container-based Azure services

Choose from these hosting options based on your application needs:

Service Deployment approach Best suited for
Azure App Service Custom container Web applications, APIs
Azure Functions Custom handlers Event-driven, serverless workloads
Azure Container Apps Container Microservices, containerized applications

Try a Rust quickstart

Get started with Rust on Azure using these quickstarts and tutorials:

Next steps