AssemblyScript, as a variant of TypeScript that is syntactically similar to JavaScript, allows developers accustomed to JavaScript to use a familiar language for targeting WebAssembly, potentially reducing the learning curve of a separate language that can be compiled to WebAssembly.

Furthermore, because AssemblyScript was designed to be an optimal source language for WebAssembly, the language's type system closely reflects that of WebAssembly,[10] and the language provides standard low-level functions (typically implemented as macros) that map directly to WebAssembly instructions that mirror instructions available on modern processors such as SIMD and vector instructions and more specialized instructions such as clz (count leading zero bits), ctz (count trailing zero bits), and popcnt (population count), used in applications such as encryption and cryptographic libraries.

[18][19] In 2021, Webpack started using AssemblyScript to speed up the calculation of hash functions such as xxhash and md4 sources.

Lead Emscripten developer Alon Zakai has characterized AssemblyScript as being "designed with WebAssembly and code size in mind.

"[21] Aaron Turner, a senior engineer at Fastly, a cloud computing services provider that uses WebAssembly for the company's Compute@Edge serverless compute environment, in a review of AssemblyScript wrote:[22] While AssemblyScript requires stricter typing than TypeScript does, it sticks as close as possible to TypeScript syntax and semantics—which means that most JavaScript developers will find AssemblyScript comfortable to use—and it enables great support for the modern JavaScript ecosystem.

It offers a large group of developers who already write applications for the web a path to pick up and learn WebAssembly.