This has been my experience with Rust as well. The safety actually does cost some performance. Just like how C++'s "zero-cost" abstractions cost something.
It seems like a straightforward trade between speed and safety to me, but nobody in the Rust community wants to admit it. As such, there aren't a lot of public benchmarks of applications out there that can help the rest of us figure out when we actually should use rust - when the performance is worth the safety (no, Rust evangelists, that kind of safety is not always worth it, and no, we don't always pay the same costs for it).
It seems like a straightforward trade between speed and safety to me, but nobody in the Rust community wants to admit it. As such, there aren't a lot of public benchmarks of applications out there that can help the rest of us figure out when we actually should use rust - when the performance is worth the safety (no, Rust evangelists, that kind of safety is not always worth it, and no, we don't always pay the same costs for it).