Rhai
Shares rank 12 of 14 scripting languages by recommenders
Embeddable scripting language for Rust that people pick after comparing alternatives; its fully controllable API also makes sandboxing straightforward.
Embeddable scripting language for Rust that people pick after comparing alternatives; its fully controllable API also makes sandboxing straightforward.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Picked over other scripting options
“I have many good options for scripting, like Rhai.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Obsidian plugin was abused to deploy a remote access trojan” “after three attempts I landed on rhai”
Comment from 17 May 2026 in “Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust”
Other scripting languages people recommend
The four most recommended other scripting languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lua | 186 | 62 | 75% | 12 | 10 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| awk | 67 | 18 | 79% | 12 | — | Approved |
| AutoHotkey | 44 | 5 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| GDScript | 22 | 16 | 58% | 9 | — | — |
| RhaiThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 5 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I'd like to see something like Rhai or Roto take off which has a natural upgrade path to Rust.”
“It's simple enough LLMs can easily write it with a little context, and you control the entire API so you can sandbox effectively”
“Rhai looks nice, I'll take a look, thanks!”
“after three attempts I landed on rhai”
“I have many good options for scripting, like Rhai.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.