ASP.NET Core 10 brings production-ready Native AOT for minimal APIs and MVC controllers. The result is a self-contained executable under 20 MB that starts in under 100 ms on modern Windows Server hardware.

Teams running high-density workloads on shared Windows hosts see the biggest gains. Cold-start latency drops dramatically compared with JIT-compiled deployments while maintaining full compatibility with the current .NET 10 runtime.

#Key Changes in ASP.NET Core 10 AOT

The trimming analyzer now understands more ASP.NET Core abstractions, including endpoint filters and minimal API delegates. Source-generated JSON serialization is enabled by default when PublishAot is set.

  • Trim warnings reduced for common DI registrations
  • Built-in support for OpenAPI document generation at publish time
  • Improved HttpClient and Kestrel trimming rules

#Project File Configuration

xml 
<PropertyGroup>
  <PublishAot>true</PublishAot>
  <InvariantGlobalization>true</InvariantGlobalization>
  <PublishTrimmed>true</PublishTrimmed>
</PropertyGroup>

#Handling Reflection and DI

Register services that require reflection with the [DynamicallyAccessedMembers] attribute. For Entity Framework Core, use the new source-generated model in EF Core 10 to avoid runtime model building.

csharp 
[assembly: DllImport("System.Native", EntryPoint = "...")]
public partial class Program { }

#Publishing to IIS

Use the dotnet publish command with the win-x64 runtime identifier. The resulting executable can be pointed to directly from the IIS application pool without the .NET hosting bundle.

bash 
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

Test the published binary on a staging server before switching traffic. Verify that all required native dependencies are present in the publish folder.

Native AOT in ASP.NET Core 10 removes JIT overhead and reduces memory footprint on Windows Server. Start with a small minimal API project, enable PublishAot, fix trimming warnings, and measure startup time before scaling to larger services.