================================================================================ The Great Web Framework Shootout

| Copyright: (c) 2012 Seth Davis | http://blog.curiasolutions.com/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+_.

.. _The Great Web Framework Shootout's website: http://blog.curiasolutions.com/the-great-web-framework-shootout/ .. _Google+: http://profiles.google.com/seedifferently

"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 website: http://blog.curiasolutions.com/the-great-web-framework-shootout/

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 framework’s 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.

.. _CHANGELOG.rst: http://github.com/seedifferently/the-great-web-framework- shootout/blob/master/CHANGELOG.rst