Go is slower because it optimizes for compile time.

Rust is slower (usually) because Rust does not revolve around making the most use of the hardware it has.

both are fine choices; nothing wrong with either direction.

Zig performs very well by default because it was designed to be efficient and fast from the start, without compromise. it has memory safety, too, but in a way that few seem to understand, myself included, so it's difficult for me to describe with my rudimentary understanding.

Maybe if you use nostd. I evaluated a bunch of Rust libraries for some server software, but I could not use any of them because they pervasively assume that it is ok to make syscalls to allocate memory. If you'd like to write software that makes few syscalls in the steady state, you can do it in rust, but you can't use libraries. Or String or Vec, I guess.