ECC vs RSA: Security & Performance Trade-offs

ECC and RSA are both used for public-key cryptography. In this lesson we compare them systematically across key size, speed, signature size, and quantum resistance.

Security level | RSA key | ECC key 80-bit | 1024 | 160 112-bit | 2048 | 224 128-bit | 3072 | 256 192-bit | 7680 | 384 256-bit | 15360 | 521 ECC requires ~6-10× smaller keys for equal security.