• Scope
  • Hello World
  • Disclaimer
• Languages
  • Ruby
  • Python
  • JavaScript
  • Dart
  • Elixir
  • Crystal
  • Nim
  • GO
• Tools
  • Wrk
  • Platform
  • RAM and CPU
• Benchmarks
  • Results
  • Puma
  • Gunicorn with Meinheld
  • Node Cluster
  • Dart HttpServer
  • Plug with Cowboy
  • Crystal HTTP
  • httpbeast
  • GO ServeMux
  • Hyper

The idea behind this repository is to benchmark different languages implementation of HTTP server.

The application i tested is minimal: the HTTP version of the Hello World example.
This approach allows including languages i barely know, since it is pretty easy to find such implementation online.
If you're looking for more complex examples, you will have better luck with the TechEmpower benchmarks.

Please do take the following numbers with a grain of salt: it is not my intention to promote one language over another basing on micro-benchmarks.
Indeed you should never pick a language just basing on its presumed performance.

I have became lazy with years and just adopt languages i can install via homebrew, sorry Oracle/MS. This also allows me to benchmark them in a single session, thus trying to use an environment as neutral as possible. Where possible i just relied on the standard library, but when it is not production-ready (i.e. Ruby, Python).

Ruby 3.0.0 is used. Ruby is a general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language, focused on simplicity and productivity.

Python 3.9.1 is used. Python is a widely used high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language.

Node.js version 15.5.0 is used. Node.js is based on the V8 JavaScript engine, optimized by Google and supporting most of the new language's features.

Dart version 2.10.4 is used. Dart is a VM based, object-oriented, sound typed language using a C-style syntax that transcompiles optionally into JavaScript.

Elixir 1.11.2 is used. Elixir is a purely functional language that runs on the Erlang VM and is strongly influenced by the Ruby syntax.

Crystal 0.35.1 is used. Crystal has a syntax very close to Ruby, but brings some desirable features such as statically typing and ahead of time (AOT) compilation.

Nim 1.4.2 is used. Nim is an AOT, Python inspired, statically typed language that comes with an ambitious compiler aimed to produce code in C, C++, JavaScript or ObjectiveC.

GO 1.15.6 is used. GO is an AOT language that focuses on simplicity and offers a broad standard library with CSP constructs built in.

I used wrk as the loading tool.
I measured each application server six times, picking the best lap (but for VM based languages demanding longer warm-up).

wrk -t 4 -c 100 -d30s --timeout 2000 http://0.0.0.0:9292

These benchmarks are recorded on a MacBook PRO 13 2019 having these specs:

• macOS Catalina
• 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
• 8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

I measured RAM and CPU consumption by using macOS Activity Monitor dashboard and recording max consumption peak.
For the languages relying on pre-forking parallelism i reported the average consumption by taking a snapshot during the stress period.

I tested Ruby by using a plain Rack application served by Puma.

RUBYOPT='--jit' puma -w 8 -t 2 --preload servers/rack_server.ru

I tested Python by using Gunicorn spawning Meinheld workers with a plain WSGI compliant server.

cd servers
gunicorn -w 4 -k meinheld.gmeinheld.MeinheldWorker -b :9292 wsgi_server:app

I used the cluster module included into Node's standard library.

node servers/node_server.js

I used the async HTTP server embedded into the Dart standard library and compiled it with dart2native AOT compiler.

dart2native servers/dart_server.dart -k aot
dartaotruntime servers/dart_server.aot

I tested Elixir by using Plug library that provides a Cowboy adapter.

cd servers/plug_server
MIX_ENV=prod mix compile
MIX_ENV=prod mix run --no-halt

I used Crystal HTTP server standard library, enabling parallelism by using the preview_mt flag.

crystal build -Dpreview_mt --release servers/crystal_server.cr
./crystal_server

To test Nim i opted for the httpbeast library: an asynchronous server relying on Nim HTTP standard library.

nim c -d:release --threads:on servers/httpbeast_server.nim
./servers/httpbeast_server

I used the HTTP ServeMux GO standard library.

go run servers/servemux_server.go