Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Glidesort, a new stable sort in Rust up to ~4x faster for random data

Hi all, I've talked about glidesort a few times on HN already, but it's finally ready for release. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. An academic paper on glidesort that goes into a lot more detail than the readme is upcoming, but is not ready yet. I will be giving a talk on glidesort tomorrow at FOSDEM 2023 in the Rust Devroom at 16:10, you can seek me out there as well. In other news, I am leaving academia soon, so if you have interesting (Rust) jobs the coming months feel free to approach me.

Glidesort is a stable sorting algorithm for Rust that achieves significantly improved performance on random data compared to standard implementations. Designed for developers working with Rust, it offers up to 4x… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Glidesort, a new stable sort in Rust up to ~4x faster for random data launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1
FastGraphRAG – Better RAG using good old PageRank▲457
Hey there HN! We’re Antonio, Luca, and Yuhang, and we’re excited to introduce Fast GraphRAG, an open-source RAG approach that leverages knowledge graphs and the 25 years old PageRank for better information retrieval and reasoning. Building a good RAG pipeline these days takes a lot of manual optimizations. Most engineers intuitively start from naive RAG: throw everything in a vector database and hope that semantic search is powerful enough. This can work for use cases where accuracy isn’t too important and hallucinations are tolerable, but it doesn’t work for more difficult queries that…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
2
A hash array-mapped trie implementation in C▲171
Long-simmering side project that is finally ready to see the light. HAMTs are a cool persistent data structure and implementing one has been a lot of fun. Beyond the code, there is likely some value in the extensive and largely complete implementation docs; basic benchmarks are linked in the README, too. Kind of aiming to be "the libavl for HAMTs". That is obviously a high and aspirational bar but a distinct possibility if it stirs up a little interest and/or contribution. Anyways, it's time for this to go out, collect feedback and maybe even some use outside of toy projects. Let me…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
3
LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory▲331
I built LocalGPT over 4 nights as a Rust reimagining of the OpenClaw assistant pattern (markdown-based persistent memory, autonomous heartbeat tasks, skills system). It compiles to a single ~27MB binary — no Node.js, Docker, or Python required. Key features: - Persistent memory via markdown files (MEMORY, HEARTBEAT, SOUL markdown files) — compatible with OpenClaw's format - Full-text search (SQLite FTS5) + semantic search (local embeddings, no API key needed) - Autonomous heartbeat runner that checks tasks on a configurable interval - CLI + web interface + desktop GUI - Multi-provider:…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
4
Turbolite – a SQLite VFS serving sub-250ms cold JOIN queries from S3▲185
I built a SQLite VFS in Rust that serves cold queries directly from S3 with sub-second performance, and often much faster. It’s called turbolite. It is experimental, buggy, and may corrupt data. I would not trust it with anything important yet. I wanted to explore whether object storage has gotten fast enough to support embedded databases over cloud storage. Filesystems reward tiny random reads and in-place mutation. S3 rewards fewer requests, bigger transfers, immutable objects, and aggressively parallel operations where bandwidth is often the real constraint. This was explicitly inspired…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
5
A fast HNSW implementation in Rust▲111
HNSW implementation in Rust. Reference: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1603/1603.09320.pdf - swapneel/hnsw-rust
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
6SA
Spart – A Rust library for fast spatial search with Python bindings▲31
Hi everyone, I've made an open-source library for fast spatial search in Rust. It's called Spart, and it currently provides the following features: - Five tree implementations: Quadtree, Octree, Kd-tree, R-tree, and R*-tree - Python bindings (`pyspart` on PyPI) - Fast k-nearest neighbor (kNN) and radius search - Bulk data loading for efficient tree construction Project's GitHub repo: https://github.com/habedi/spart
2025 · its alternatives →
7
HelixDB – Open-source vector-graph database for AI applications (Rust)▲237
Hey HN, we want to share HelixDB (https://github.com/HelixDB/helix-db/), a project a college friend and I are working on. It’s a new database that natively intertwines graph and vector types, without sacrificing performance. It’s written in Rust and our initial focus is on supporting RAG. Here’s a video runthrough: https://screen.studio/share/szgQu3yq. Why a hybrid? Vector databases are useful for similarity queries, while graph databases are useful for relationship queries. Each stores data in a way that’s best for its main type of query (e.g.…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
Chonkie – A Fast, Lightweight Text Chunking Library for RAG▲199
I built Chonkie because I was tired of rewriting chunking code for RAG applications. Existing libraries were either too bloated (80MB+) or too basic, with no middle ground. Core features: - 21MB default install vs 80-171MB alternatives - 33x faster token chunking than popular alternatives - Supports multiple chunking strategies: token, word, sentence, and semantic - Works with all major tokenizers (transformers, tokenizers, tiktoken) - Zero external dependencies for basic functionality Technical optimizations: - Uses tiktoken with multi-threading for faster tokenization - Implements…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
Zig Topological Sort Library for Parallel Processing▲114
I believe the best way to learn a language is by doing an in-depth project. This is my first Zig project intended for learning the ropes on publishing a Zig package. It turns out to be quite solid and performant. It might be a bit over-engineered. This little library is packed with the following features: - Building dependency graph from dependency data. - Performing topological sort on the dependency graph. - Generating dependence-free subsets for parallel processing. - Cycle detection and cycle reporting.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
QuadSort, Esoteric Fast Sort▲78
Quadsort is a branchless stable adaptive mergesort faster than quicksort. - scandum/quadsort
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
11
A weekend replication of STOKE, a stochastic superoptimiser▲58
Haskell re-implementation of STOKE, the stochastic superoptimizer - blaze/notebooks/tutorial.ipynb at master · bollu/blaze
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
12
A first project in Rust – in-memory order book▲91
Contribute to connorwstein/exchange development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
13
Tantivy▲68
A full-text, horse-speed search engine library in Rust
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
14
Zipslicer, a library for loading LLM checkpoints on consumer hardware▲38
This is a low-level opensource library I developed for my own use and decided to share, as it makes it possible to process large checkpoints of neural networks without renting high-RAM instances, on a regular PC. It replaces torch.load() with a custom function that produces a dictionary that materializes tensors on the fly. Compared to other solutions it doesn't require sharding or re-encoding checkpoints and uses them completely as-is. It is a foundation to make it possible to run inference and compress language models and other large models one layer at a time - in principle, even one…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
15
Rocky – Rust SQL engine with branches, replay, column lineage▲122
Hi HN, I'm Hugo. I've been building Rocky over the past month, shipping fast in the open. The binary is on GitHub Releases, `dagster-rocky` on PyPI, and the VS Code extension on the Marketplace. I held off on a broader announcement until the trust-system surface was coherent enough to talk about as one thing. The governance waveplan — column classification, per-env masking, 8-field audit trail on every run, `rocky compliance` rollup, role-graph reconciliation, retention policies — landed end-to-end last week in engine-v1.16.0 and rounded out in v1.17.4 (tagged 2026-04-26). That's the…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
16OA
Obelisk – a WASM-based deterministic workflow engine▲103
A lightweight engine for durable execution / deterministic workflows I built with Rust, wasmtime and the WASM Component Model. Its main use is running reliable, long-running workflows that can automatically resume after failures. Looking for feedback on the approach and potential use cases!
2025 · obeli.sk · its alternatives →
17
Optimizing LiteLLM with Rust – When Expectations Meet Reality▲27
I've been working on Fast LiteLLM - a Rust acceleration layer for the popular LiteLLM library - and I had some interesting learnings that might resonate with other developers trying to squeeze performance out of existing systems. My assumption was that LiteLLM, being a Python library, would have plenty of low-hanging fruit for optimization. I set out to create a Rust layer using PyO3 to accelerate the performance-critical parts: token counting, routing, rate limiting, and connection pooling. The Approach - Built Rust implementations for token counting using tiktoken-rs - Added lock-free data…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
18
I developed a fast general purpose sorting algorithm▲56
The world's fastest general purpose sorting algorithm, 60% faster than Quicksort - hackware1993/ChenSort
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
Glowstick – type level tensor shapes in stable rust▲53
Hi HN, In the past few years I've become more interested in machine learning. Since I'm sure the same is true for many here, I wanted to share this project I've been working on: glowstick uses type-directed metaprogramming to keep track of tensor shapes in Rust's type system and determine which operations are permitted or not at compile time. I find Rust has a lot of strengths when it comes to ML applications, but waiting until runtime to find shape related issues feels a bit strange since normally I don't run the code all that often while developing. Given Rust has fancy types available, I…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
20
Fast subdomain enumerator written in Rust▲23
Hello! I'm learning Rust and also information security, so what better way to learn than to put a tool together practicing both skills? I've tried to use a couple of different tools for subdomain enumeration (part of the Discovery-party when it comes to penetration testing), but none of them were very fast, even if the DNS resolver I pointed them towards is, so I wrote my own tool that leverages concurrency to check a lot of subdomains, fast! It's written in Rust, main parts being using Tokio and async_channels, and I think it works good enough for a first release. I wanted to get recursive…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
21
An update-aware approach to incremental sorting (DeltaSort)▲6
Paper (PDF): https://github.com/shudv/deltasort/blob/main/paper/main.pdf I’ve been exploring a variant of the sorting problem where the sort routine knows about which indices were updated since the previous sort. This situation arises in many practical systems: large sorted lists that are read frequently, updated in small batches, and where the update pipeline already knows which positions changed (e.g., UI lists, leaderboards). Despite this most systems either re-sort the entire array or apply independent binary insertions or perform…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
22
A book introducing Geospatial and Rust▲11
My friend and I have been collaborating on this lighthearted introduction to doing geospatial computation in rust. Don't know Rust? Don't know geospatial? I'd be interested to know what you think.
2022 · book.georust.org · its alternatives →
23
Fast(er) Sorting with Sorting Networks▲28
Fast SIMD sorting routines for int and float arrays - zvrba/SortingNetworks
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
24
val – An arbitrary precision calculator language▲34
Wrote this to learn more about the `chumsky` parser combinator library, rustyline, and the `ariadne` error reporting crate. Such a nice DX combo for writing new languages. Still a work in progress, but I thought I'd share :)
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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