Topcoat Enables Rust to Render Server-Side Web Apps
The Register, Friday, October 30th, 2026
AWS engineer Carl Lerche, creator of Tokio, introduced Topcoat, a Rust framework for server-side web apps that compiles to JavaScript.
Speaking at ScyllaDB's P99 2026 virtual conference, AWS principal engineer Carl Lerche presented Topcoat, a framework for writing web applications in Rust.
He argued that with AI doing heavy lifting, Rust's runtime performance and safety guarantees make it worth considering for web development.
Unlike Leptos and Dioxus, which compile Rust to WebAssembly and can suffer slow initial loads, Topcoat compiles Rust code into JavaScript, which Lerche considers the best way to interact with the DOM.
He admitted it is not meant for very complex applications on the scale of Figma.