Unifast – a Rust Markdown/MDX compiler that's 25x faster than remark

Name: Unifast – a Rust Markdown/MDX compiler that's 25x faster than remark
Availability: InStock
Author: vvacla

by vvacla·Mar 20, 2026·3 points·0 comments

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AI Analysis

●MidSlickShip It

Yet another Markdown compiler when remark and unified already dominate the ecosystem.

Strengths

•Zero-copy parsing and arena allocation in Rust delivers measurable speed gains
•Dual highlight engines with Tree-sitter and syntect built in, 8x faster than rehype-highlight
•20+ built-in plugins cover GFM, math, emoji, frontmatter without external dependencies

Weaknesses

•Markdown compilation is a solved problem — remark/rehype ecosystem is mature and extensible
•Early stage with author soliciting bug reports — not production-ready for critical pipelines

Post Description

Hi HN,

I built Unifast, a markdown/MDX compiler written in Rust.

It focuses on a simpler compiler pipeline and, in my benchmarks, compiles around 25x faster than the usual remark/rehype-based setup.

This started as a personal project because I felt the existing markdown toolchain was powerful, but sometimes more layered and complex than I wanted for straightforward compilation.

It’s still very early, so I’d really appreciate bug reports, feedback, and feature requests.

Repo / docs: https://unifast.dev/ https://github.com/kenzo-pj/unifast