# JetBrains RustRover

17 Hacker News commenters recommended JetBrains RustRover and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for fast Rust navigation, debugging and code analysis that people find better than VS Code; the common caveat is heavy memory and CPU use.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong Rust-specific analysis and tooling (3 comments): "Just debugging rust for example is a night and day difference between vscode and rust rover." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288379)) "the only thing they have a stronglehold over is their amazing rust analyzer in rustrover" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46362776)) "Rustover is particularly helpful because of how rust is worked with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389557))
- Fast navigation between files and definitions (2 comments): "It's often just faster to do that, especially with an IDE which allows for quick non linear navigation through the files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49799930)) "it's just 'Go to definition/implementation' every time from the IDE" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652613))
- Long-time users prefer it to alternatives (2 comments): "I still love RustRover and PyCharm! Switching to anything else would be a big downgrade." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49799662)) "RustRover are better for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716245))

## What people warn about

- High RAM and CPU use (3 comments): "I'm running intellij (RustRover) right now, and its sitting on about 4.5gb of ram. That still seems very inefficient to me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46715576)) "They will bring a 9950x with nothing else running to a crawl." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49801859)) "IntelliJ (PyCharm/RustRover) turn it into a space heater" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49189480))
- Slow performance at times (3 comments): "slowed RustRover down to a crawl, where syntax highlighting couldn't keep up- it was unusable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48185793)) "RustRover is a slow dog at times, but even it outperforms emacs for a lot of things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945992)) "It felt much slower than I remember" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48185600))
- Rebuild and run configuration problems (2 comments): "I ended up unable to get a working run configuration, or at least one that showed me anything at all" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945817)) "it seems to start over rebuilding more things than when I edit something in vim" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294487))
- Disappointing or wrong results (2 comments): "it's been a huge disappointment every time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019061)) "it's outright wrong half the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48198081))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides.md): 233 recommend
- [IntelliJ IDEA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea.md): 206 recommend
- [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio.md): 165 recommend
- [Delphi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi.md): 126 recommend
- [Xcode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xcode.md): 100 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.jetbrains.com/rust/)

## Cite as

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