# rustls

13 Hacker News commenters recommended rustls and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Memory-safe TLS library written in Rust, recommended as a modern alternative to OpenSSL and C TLS stacks. One critic notes it still outsources cryptographic primitives.

## Why people recommend it

- Memory safety over C code (3 comments): "C memory safety vulnerabilities arise from trying to handle these dynamic things which rustls fixes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47012492)) "great primatives in Rust like rustls (modern openSSL) and Tokio (async)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466549)) "rustls (modern memory safe OpenSSL)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48469129))
- Adopted by a growing number of projects (3 comments): "Some grants by STF, like Mastodon, Openstreetmaps, Let's Encrypt, rustls are spot on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49476074)) "I go and toggle the reqwest switch to use rustls every time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47583815)) "A number of projects are shifting to it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46792269))
- Praised as very advanced and good (3 comments): "There is of course RustTLS that already exists and is already very advanced." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46267899)) "It has TLS in the name, it is good and there is a C FFI wrapper." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001469)) "I've never been happier with the overall library." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47011083))
- Seen as a great Rust primitive (2 comments): "The Rust community has built some great primatives like rustls and tokio" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359025)) "great primatives in Rust like rustls (modern openSSL) and Tokio (async)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466549))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [wolfSSL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wolfssl.md): 14 recommend
- [BearSSL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bearssl.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "rustls", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rustls/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).