Performance Comparison of Deno and Node.js on Over 30+ Tests

Performance Comparison of Deno and Node.js on over 30+ tests

Introduction

Deno is a simple, modern, and secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. Deno is sandboxed and supports Typescript out of the box.Deno is built over Google’s V8 engine and uses Rust. The first major release of Deno was launched in May 2020.

Node.js is a very popular battle-tested runtime for Javascript. Node.js has been around for more than 11 years. Node.js is built over Google’s V8 engine and uses C++.

Functionally, Deno is same as Node.js.

Now onwards, there would always be two options to choose from: Node.js or Deno?

It is very unlikely that existing Node.js apps will be ported to Deno. But it is very likely that people could consider Deno for new apps.

If both are functionally same, what are the primary factors to consider Deno over Node.js:

Reliability
Performance
(could be more …)

Reliability would be discussed separately. The focus of this page is performance.

So, is Deno ready for prime time? Can it perform as good as or better as Node.js? If Deno can’t perform as good as Node.js, it can never become a major runtime.

The purpose of this repository/page is to continually run and report 30+ on tests to compare Deno’s performance against Node.js. The plan is to keep this repository/page updated as soon as there are new releases on either Deno or Node.js. The frequency would likely be weekly.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that, only readings would be presented. Coming to a conclusion is upto the reader.

Work is still in progress

Versions

Deno: 1.5.2

Node.js: 15.1.0

Environment

MacBook Pro 1.4Ghz Quad core i5 with 8G memory

List of Tests

Test	Description
`Hello world!`	This one is a very simple hello world program. It responds to a GET request with a JSON containing a string Hello World!
`Hello world with frameworks - oak and express`	Hello world program using the popular frameworks: Oak/Deno, Express/Node.js
`Echo name over HTTPS`	A simple echo name program that runs over HTTPS
`Five hundred random integers`	Generate five hundred random integers and return them in a JSON array
`Five hundred random 16 character hex string`	Generate five hundred random 16 character hex strings and return them in a JSON array
`One hundred V1 UUIDs`	Generate one hundred V1 UUIDs and return them in a JSON array
`One hundred V4 UUIDs`	Generate one hundred V4 UUIDs and return them in a JSON array
`One hundred V5 UUIDs`	Generate one hundred V5 UUIDs and return them in a JSON array
`Parse five hundred strings`	Parse five hundred strings containing integers and return parsed integers in a JSON array
`Calculate mean of 500 numbers`	Calculate mean of 500 numbers and return it in response
`Calculate median of 500 numbers`	Calculate median of 500 numbers and return it in response

Tests and Results

Hello world!

This one is a very simple hello world program. It responds to a GET request with a JSON containing a string Hello World!

Concurrency=1

Total requests: 1000

Reading	Node.js	Deno
TimeTakenMS	`596`	`632`
Mean	`0.31`	`0.35`
Median	`0.28`	`0.32`
Min	`0.241`	`0.258`
Max	`1.412`	`2.274`

Deno is 5.70% slower than Node.js

Concurrency=10

Total requests: 10000

Reading	Node.js	Deno
TimeTakenMS	`1853`	`1891`
Mean	`1.14`	`1.22`
Median	`0.99`	`1.04`
Min	`0.229`	`0.303`
Max	`11.085`	`19.547`

Deno is 2.01% slower than Node.js

Concurrency=25

Total requests: 25000

Reading	Node.js	Deno
TimeTakenMS	`4398`	`4127`
Mean	`3.14`	`2.63`
Median	`2.89`	`2.36`
Min	`0.213`	`0.338`
Max	`15.862`	`25.808`

Deno is 6.16% faster than Node.js

Hello world with frameworks - oak and express

Hello world program using the popular frameworks: Oak/Deno, Express/Node.js