rustfmt
Ranked 7 of 7 code formatters by recommenders
Rust's official code formatter, recommended for ending style debates and enforcing one consistent style across projects. Critics find its automatic line breaking and alignment frustrating.
Rust's official code formatter, recommended for ending style debates and enforcing one consistent style across projects. Critics find its automatic line breaking and alignment frustrating.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: 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
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, 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
Ends style debates across teams
“enforcing the same style ends all of the drama”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 on Hacker News “strict and deterministic systems like rustfmt”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “Beagle, a source code management system that stores AST trees” “I love gofmt, rustfmt, ruff.”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “Ruff v0.16.0 – Significant new updates – 413 default rules up from 59” Shared config across repositories
“I've got a `.rustfmt.toml` file in all my repos with hard_tabs = true”
Comment from 24 May 2026 in “Migrating from Go to Rust” “taking a look at fmt & clippy configs helps too”
Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “Rust Style Guide”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unpredictable line breaking and alignment
“The built-in formatter drives me insane it's always choosing or not choosing to line break in places that make zero semantic sense.”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Topcoat is pushing the boundary of server applications with Rust” “But rustfmt would insist on returning it to this disappointment”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Rust's Block Pattern” “Guess, another decade before Rust robots can do columns?”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “Rust Style Guide” Only useful for indentation width
“It's basically inferior for everything except forcing everyone to use the same indentation width”
Comment from 24 May 2026 in “Migrating from Go to Rust”
Other code formatters people recommend
The four most recommended other code formatters, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gofmt | 26 | 5 | 84% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Black | 18 | 6 | 75% | 6 | — | Approved |
| FracturedJson | 18 | 2 | 90% | 2 | — | — |
| Prettier | 16 | 10 | 62% | 8 | — | — |
| rustfmtThis page | 6 | 4 | 60% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Guess, another decade before Rust robots can do columns?”
“taking a look at fmt & clippy configs helps too”
“The built-in formatter drives me insane it's always choosing or not choosing to line break in places that make zero semantic sense.”
“I love gofmt, rustfmt, ruff.”
“I've got a `.rustfmt.toml` file in all my repos with hard_tabs = true”
“It's basically inferior for everything except forcing everyone to use the same indentation width”
“Clippy and fmt alone often cause the LLM to hit a snag and realize it's mistake”
“strict and deterministic systems like rustfmt”
“But rustfmt would insist on returning it to this disappointment”
“enforcing the same style ends all of the drama”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.