uWestJS Benchmarks

Performance benchmarks comparing uWestJS against Express and Fastify.

Quick Start

From the project root:

# Quick benchmark (10s per scenario)
npm run benchmark:quick

# Full benchmark (20s per scenario, saves to results.md)
npm run benchmark

# Test setup
npm run benchmark:test

Or from the benchmarks directory:

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run quick benchmark (10s per scenario)
npm run benchmark:quick

# Run full benchmark (20s per scenario, saves to results.md)
npm run benchmark

# Test setup
npm test

Advanced Commands

For historical tracking and comparison (typically used by CI/CD):

# Save current results to history
npm run benchmark:save

# Compare current results with last 5 runs
npm run benchmark:compare

These commands are automatically run by the CI/CD pipeline. See Historical Tracking section for details.

Requirements

• Node.js 24 or 25
• wrk (HTTP benchmarking tool)
  • Linux: sudo apt-get install wrk
  • macOS: brew install wrk
  • Windows: Use WSL

Scenarios

HTTP Benchmarks

1. hello-world - Simple text response

   • Tests raw request/response performance
   • Minimal overhead, pure framework speed

2. json-response - JSON serialization

   • Tests JSON serialization performance
   • Includes nested objects and arrays

3. static-file - Static file serving (10KB)

   • Tests file serving performance
   • Measures throughput for static assets

4. mixed-response - Mixed response types

   • Tests different response types (JSON, text, errors)
   • Includes query parameters and status codes

5. query-params - Query string parsing

   • Tests query parameter extraction
   • Multiple parameters with different types

6. post-json - POST body parsing

   • Tests JSON body parsing performance
   • Uses Lua script for POST requests
   • Echo back parsed data

7. headers - Header access

   • Tests request header reading
   • Multiple header access patterns

8. route-params - Path parameters

   • Tests route parameter extraction
   • Nested path parameters (/users/:id/posts/:postId)

Results

uWestJS consistently outperforms Express and Fastify:

• 1.6x - 2.1x faster than Express
• 1.6x - 2.0x faster than Fastify

See results.md for detailed benchmark results.

Historical Tracking

Benchmark results are automatically saved to history/ directory with:

• Timestamp and commit hash
• Node.js version and platform
• Results for all scenarios

Compare with History

# Compare current results with last 5 runs
npm run benchmark:compare

# Save current results to history
npm run benchmark:save

The CI/CD pipeline automatically:

• Saves results to history on main branch
• Compares PR results against baseline
• Flags >10% performance regressions

Architecture

• scenarios/ - Benchmark scenarios
• wrk-scripts/ - Lua scripts for wrk (POST requests, etc.)
• server.js - Framework server spawner
• run.js - Main benchmark runner
• test-setup.js - Quick validation script
• save-history.js - Save results to history
• compare-history.js - Compare with historical data
• generate-detailed-report.js - Generate detailed metrics report

CI/CD

Benchmarks run automatically on:

• Pull requests (posts results as comment)
• Pushes to main/master
• Manual workflow dispatch

See .github/workflows/benchmark.yml for configuration.