Loco vs Axum

Architecture comparison 2 projects Built from source-audited deep dives

Loco is built on Axum, so this is a choice between conventions and freedom. Loco adds Rails-style generators, SeaORM models and migrations, Tera views, JWT auth, background workers, a scheduler, mailers, storage and caching. Plain Axum gives you routing, extractors and Tower middleware and leaves every other decision to you.

Loco Axum

Loco: Rust · Apache-2.0
Axum: Rust · MIT
Updated: 2026-10-02

Which one should you pick?

Pick Loco if…

You are building a CRUD-heavy SaaS and want generators for models, controllers, workers and mailers
You come from Rails and want familiar conventions in Rust
You want auth, jobs, cache and storage wired in with feature flags

Pick Axum if…

You are building an API or service that does not look like a Rails app
You want to choose the database layer (sqlx, Diesel, SeaORM) and templating yourself
You want the smallest dependency footprint

Side by side

Attribute	Loco	Axum
Written in	Rust	Rust
License	Apache-2.0	MIT
Frontend	none	none
Backend & APIs	Rust AxumTeraLettreJWT	Rust AxumTowerHyperTokio
Data & persistence	SeaORM sqlx RedisOpenDAL	none
Infrastructure & deploy	GitHub Actions Astro	GitHub Actionscargo-deny
Key decisions	Rails conventions on top of Axum and SeaORM Generators and app templates as separate crates Feature flags decide the infrastructure footprint	No middleware system of its own: everything is a Tower service Split into axum, axum-core, axum-extra and axum-macros crates Macro-free routing on a pinned matchit router
Audited	9f7e021 · 2026-10-02	f8b02f2 · 2026-10-02

How they differ

What you get

Loco (loco-rs) bundles a full application framework: Axum controllers, SeaORM 2.0 models and migrations, Tera views and mailer templates, JWT auth with argon2, background workers on Postgres, SQLite or Redis, a cron-style scheduler, OpenDAL storage and an in-memory or Redis cache. Each piece sits behind a feature flag. Axum is the routing and extraction layer underneath: Router, typed extractors, axum::serve on Hyper, and Tower middleware.

How you build

In Loco you run cargo loco generate scaffold, migration, worker, mailer or task. Templates come from loco-gen, and new apps start from loco new. In Axum you assemble the layout yourself. The repository’s examples/ (sqlx-postgres, diesel-postgres, jwt, oauth, templates-minijinja) show common integrations as separate runnable projects.

Agents and conventions

Loco’s repository includes an AGENTS.md, an agent skill and a graded evals/ suite. Axum’s strength for agents is its small surface: plain functions, typed extractors and compile errors from debug_handler. With either, the agent loop is the same: cargo check, cargo clippy -- -D warnings, cargo test.

Rules

Agent-ready rules for each style: Loco + SeaORM, Rust + Axum + PostgreSQL for APIs, and Axum + htmx + Askama for server-rendered apps. Background: Building web apps in Rust in 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Does Loco use Axum?

Yes. Loco controllers are Axum handlers (axum 0.8 with macros and multipart), and tower-http middleware for tracing, CORS, compression, timeouts and static files is configured in its workspace, so Axum extractors and Tower layers work inside a Loco app.

Is Loco the Rails of Rust?

It describes itself as "Rust on Rails": convention over configuration, generators, an ORM with migrations, controllers, views, background jobs, a scheduler and mailers. It is far younger than Rails, with a smaller ecosystem.

Which database does each use?

Loco uses SeaORM 2.0 on sqlx 0.9 with PostgreSQL and optional SQLite. Axum has no data layer; its repository examples show sqlx, Diesel, diesel-async, tokio-postgres, MongoDB and Redis integrations.

Is Loco good for AI coding agents?

Its repository ships an AGENTS.md, an agent skill under skills/loco and an evals harness that grades agents on Loco tasks in CI. Generators also give agents a fixed layout to follow, which reduces boilerplate mistakes.

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