Rust ORM comparison
Rent vs Ent
Ent is Facebook's entity framework for Go. Its model is a schema defined in code, a generated statically typed client, traversal over relationships, privacy policies, hooks, and interceptors. Rent provides the same categories of capability for Rust.
Rent replaces Go schema files with a single RSL document, generates an async Rust client, and ships its own migration planner, so there is no Go toolchain and no external migration service. PostgreSQL extensions become typed packages instead of raw SQL.
Side by side
| Aspect | Rent (Rust) | Ent (Go) |
|---|---|---|
| Schema source | One central RSL document is the source of truth. The Rust client and the database catalog are both derived from it. | Schemas are Go code under ent/schema, compiled by the Ent code generator. |
| Generated client | Async Rust builders for CRUD, predicates, relationship traversal, eager loading, and pagination. | A Go client with builders, predicates, edge traversal, and eager loading. |
| Migrations | Rent diffs the RSL schema against the live catalog, classifies every operation as safe, review, or destructive, writes append-only SQL, and seals it with checksums in rent.sum. | Automatic migration or versioned migrations planned with Atlas. |
| Authorization | Row policies, tenant scoping, hooks, and interceptors are part of the generated client and apply to reads, writes, and relationship endpoints. | Privacy policies, hooks, and interceptors on the generated client. |
| PostgreSQL extensions | Typed packages for pgvector, PostGIS, pgmq, pg_cron, pg_net, TimescaleDB, pg_search, pg_trgm, citext, pgcrypto, uuid-ossp, pg_jsonschema, pg_partman, and pgAudit, declared in the schema and checked before migration. | Extensions are used through custom SQL modifiers. |
| Databases | PostgreSQL first, with MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite on the same generated client. | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, and Gremlin-based graph backends. |
Choose Rent when
- You want schema-driven code generation with policies and hooks in a Rust service.
- You want migrations planned and applied by one Rust binary.
- You need typed access to PostgreSQL extensions.
Choose Ent when
- Your service is written in Go.
- You need a graph database backend.