The Great Web Framework Shootout
Synopsis
Welcome to the great web framework shootout. Here you will find test code and benchmark results comparing the performance of a few of the most popular F/OSS web frameworks in use today.
Please see The Great Web Framework Shootout's website for important disclaimers and other detailed information about these benchmarks. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me on Google+.
"Do these results have any real world value?"
Probably not. When it comes to code, the slightest adjustments have the potential to change things drastically. While I have tried to perform each test as fairly and accurately as possible, it would be foolish to consider these results as scientific in any way. It should also be noted that my goal here was not necessarily to figure out how fast each framework could perform at its most optimized configuration (although built-in caching and other performance tweaks were usually enabled if the default configuration permitted it), but rather to see what a minimal "out-of-the-box" experience would look like.
Additionally, nothing here is intended to make one web technology appear "better" than another. When it comes to using the right tool for the job, "faster" does not necessarily mean "better" (very few real world projects are going to depend solely on page request speeds).
"Will you please add XYZ to the results?"
Maybe, if you can convince me that enough people would be interested in having it displayed next to heavyweights like Rails and Django. Fork the repository and submit a pull request under the dev branch with a test app in the same format as the other tests, and make sure you include your best sales pitch. Otherwise, I'd suggest you boot up the EC2 AMI and do your own benchmarking.
Benchmark Results
Three basic tests were set up for each framework to run. Below are the results of each test in requests per second from highest (best performance) to lowest (worst performance).
Remember: Comparing all of these framework tests side-by-side isn't really "fair" because they are all so different. Compiled languages (e.g. Go) are expected to be faster than scripted languages. Tests using an ORM (e.g. Rails, Django, Pyramid, etc.) are expected to be slower than tests using only a plain database library (e.g. Bottle, Flask, Sinatra, etc).
Please see the website for more detailed information and a better breakdown of the tests (graphs included!).
The "Hello World" String Test
This test simply spits out a string response. There's no template or DB calls involved, so the level of processing should be minimal.
| Framework | Reqs/sec |
|---|---|
| web.go (Go r59) | 3346 |
| Pyramid 1.2 | 3026 |
| Bottle 0.9.6 | 2825 |
| Django 1.3.1 | 2159 |
| Flask 0.7.2 | 2054 |
| Sinatra 1.2.6 | 1583 |
| CodeIgniter 2.0.3 | 929 |
| TG 2.1.2 | 839 |
| Yii 1.1.8 | 726 |
| Kohana 3.2.0 | 714 |
| Rails 3.1 | 711 |
| Symfony 2.0.1 | 273 |
| CakePHP 1.3.11 | 254 |
The "Hello World" Template Test
This test prints out Lorem Ipsum via a template (thus engaging the framework's templating systems).
| Framework | Reqs/sec |
|---|---|
| Bottle 0.9.6 | 2417 |
| web.go (Go r59) | 1959 |
| Flask 0.7.2 | 1918 |
| Pyramid 1.2 | 1650 |
| Sinatra 1.2.6 | 1329 |
| Django 1.3.1 | 1005 |
| CodeIgniter 2.0.3 | 884 |
| Kohana 3.2.0 | 675 |
| TG 2.1.2 | 663 |
| Rails 3.1 | 625 |
| Yii 1.1.8 | 548 |
| CakePHP 1.3.11 | 203 |
| Symfony 2.0.1 | 171 |
The "Hello World" Template Test With DB Query
This test loads 5 rows of Lorem Ipsum from a SQLite DB (via the default ORM or a sqlite3 driver) and then prints them out through a template (thus engaging both the frameworkโs ORM/DB driver and the templating system).
| Framework | Reqs/sec |
|---|---|
| Bottle 0.9.6 | 1562 |
| Flask 0.7.2 | 1191 |
| Sinatra 1.2.6 | 982 |
| web.go (Go r59) | 741 |
| Pyramid 1.2 | 555 |
| CodeIgniter 2.0.3 | 542 |
| Django 1.3.1 | 465 |
| Rails 3.1 | 463 |
| Kohana 3.2.0 | 423 |
| TG 2.1.2 | 298 |
| Yii 1.1.8 | 201 |
| CakePHP 1.3.11 | 193 |
| Symfony 2.0.1 | 113 |
Test Platform Setup
All tests were performed on Amazon's EC2 with the following configuration:
- ami-fbbf7892 m1.large ubuntu-images-us/ubuntu-lucid-10.04-amd64-server- 20110719.manifest.xml
- As a "Large" instance, Amazon describes the resources as: 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of local instance storage, 64-bit platform.
- Apache 2.2.14 was used. (Yes, I know there are other options, but with Apache's market share I figured it would be a good baseline.)
- Python 2.6.5 and mod_wsgi 2.8 (embedded mode) were used for the Python based tests.
- Ruby 1.9.2p290 and Phusion Passenger 3.0.9 were used for the Ruby based tests.
- PHP 5.3.2 (with APC enabled) was used for the PHP based tests.
- ApacheBench was run with -n 10000 and -c 10 about 5-10 times each, and the "best guess average" was chosen.
Most Recent Changes
09/12/2011
- Updated Ubuntu LTS AMI (ami-fbbf7892 ubuntu-images-us/ubuntu-lucid-10.04- amd64-server-20110719.manifest.xml)
- Rails 2.x and 3.0 were dropped in favor of Rails 3.1.
- CakePHP 1.2 was dropped in favor of 1.3, but Symfony and Yii were added as they seem to have considerable market share.
- Corrected faulty configuration of CakePHP's caching engine.
See CHANGELOG.rst for more.