Native AOT is now a practical choice for many ASP.NET Core 10 API projects. It removes the JIT compiler from the deployment, yielding smaller container images and quicker startup times. Teams running high-scale or serverless workloads see the largest gains.

The feature reached broad stability in .NET 10. Most minimal API and controller endpoints compile successfully when standard patterns are followed. A few reflection-heavy libraries still require trimming annotations or alternative implementations.

This article shows the exact changes needed in a .NET 10 Web API project, lists the remaining constraints, and provides concrete steps to validate the build before production rollout.

#Project Configuration

Add the PublishAot property and the required runtime identifier to the project file. The following csproj excerpt enables AOT for a linux-x64 container target.

xml 
<PropertyGroup>
  <PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
  <RuntimeIdentifier>linux-x64</RuntimeIdentifier>
</PropertyGroup>

#Known Limitations

  • Dynamic assembly loading is unsupported.
  • Some third-party serializers require source-generation attributes.
  • EF Core lazy loading proxies must be replaced with eager loading or compiled queries.
  • Swagger generation at runtime needs the Swashbuckle source generator package.

#Validation Steps

Run dotnet publish with the -c Release flag and inspect the resulting binary size. Use the .NET AOT analyzer warnings to locate reflection calls that need trimming attributes. Test the published container locally with docker run before pushing to the registry.

#Practical Takeaway

Start with a new minimal API project in ASP.NET Core 10, enable PublishAot, and measure both image size and startup latency. Address analyzer warnings incrementally. The resulting deployment is smaller, starts faster, and runs with a reduced attack surface.