Benchmarks of Go serialization methods

This is a test suite for benchmarking various Go serialization methods.

Tested serialization methods

• encoding/gob
• encoding/json
• github.com/alecthomas/binary
• github.com/davecgh/go-xdr/xdr
• github.com/Sereal/Sereal/Go/sereal
• github.com/ugorji/go/codec
• gopkg.in/vmihailenco/msgpack.v2
• labix.org/v2/mgo/bson
• github.com/tinylib/msgp (code generator for msgpack)
• github.com/golang/protobuf (generated code)
• github.com/gogo/protobuf (generated code, optimized version of goprotobuf)
• github.com/DeDiS/protobuf (reflection based)
• github.com/google/flatbuffers
• github.com/hprose/hprose-go/io
• github.com/glycerine/go-capnproto
• zombiezen.com/go/capnproto2
• github.com/andyleap/gencode
• github.com/pascaldekloe/colfer
• github.com/linkedin/goavro

Running the benchmarks

go get -u -t
go test -bench='.*' ./

Shameless plug: I use pawk to format the table:

go test -bench='.*' ./ | pawk -F'\t' '"%-40s %10s %10s %s %s" % f'

Recommendation

If performance, correctness and interoperability are the most important factors, gogoprotobuf is currently the best choice. It does require a pre-processing step (eg. via Go 1.4's "go generate" command).

But as always, make your own choice based on your requirements.

Data

The data being serialized is the following structure with randomly generated values:

type A struct {
    Name     string
    BirthDay time.Time
    Phone    string
    Siblings int
    Spouse   bool
    Money    float64
}

Results

2017-09-28 Results with Go 1.9 on a 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 (MacBook Pro Retina 15-inch, Late 2013):

benchmark                                   iter              time/iter         bytes alloc    allocs
---------                                   ----              ---------         -----------    ------
BenchmarkMsgpMarshal-8                      10000000           178 ns/op         128 B/op       1 allocs/op
BenchmarkMsgpUnmarshal-8                     5000000           338 ns/op         112 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkVmihailencoMsgpackMarshal-8         1000000          1864 ns/op         368 B/op       6 allocs/op
BenchmarkVmihailencoMsgpackUnmarshal-8       1000000          1972 ns/op         383 B/op      13 allocs/op
BenchmarkJsonMarshal-8                        500000          2980 ns/op        1223 B/op       9 allocs/op
BenchmarkJsonUnmarshal-8                      500000          3120 ns/op         463 B/op       7 allocs/op
BenchmarkEasyJsonMarshal-8                   1000000          1288 ns/op         784 B/op       5 allocs/op
BenchmarkEasyJsonUnmarshal-8                 1000000          1330 ns/op         159 B/op       4 allocs/op
BenchmarkBsonMarshal-8                       1000000          1415 ns/op         392 B/op      10 allocs/op
BenchmarkBsonUnmarshal-8                     1000000          1996 ns/op         244 B/op      19 allocs/op
BenchmarkGobMarshal-8                        1000000          1009 ns/op          48 B/op       2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGobUnmarshal-8                      1000000          1032 ns/op         112 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkXdrMarshal-8                        1000000          1716 ns/op         392 B/op      19 allocs/op
BenchmarkXdrUnmarshal-8                      1000000          1455 ns/op         224 B/op      11 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecMsgpackMarshal-8         1000000          2148 ns/op        2721 B/op       7 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecMsgpackUnmarshal-8       1000000          2156 ns/op        3136 B/op       6 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecBincMarshal-8            1000000          2172 ns/op        2753 B/op       7 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecBincUnmarshal-8           500000          2322 ns/op        3296 B/op       9 allocs/op
BenchmarkSerealMarshal-8                      500000          2753 ns/op         912 B/op      21 allocs/op
BenchmarkSerealUnmarshal-8                    500000          3069 ns/op        1008 B/op      34 allocs/op
BenchmarkBinaryMarshal-8                     1000000          1306 ns/op         246 B/op      14 allocs/op
BenchmarkBinaryUnmarshal-8                   1000000          1497 ns/op         336 B/op      22 allocs/op
BenchmarkFlatBuffersMarshal-8                5000000           389 ns/op           0 B/op       0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFlatBuffersUnmarshal-8              5000000           252 ns/op         112 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProtoMarshal-8                  3000000           521 ns/op          56 B/op       2 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProtoUnmarshal-8                3000000           432 ns/op         200 B/op       6 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProto2Marshal-8                 2000000           757 ns/op         244 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProto2Unmarshal-8               2000000           937 ns/op         320 B/op       6 allocs/op
BenchmarkHproseMarshal-8                     2000000           887 ns/op         332 B/op       8 allocs/op
BenchmarkHproseUnmarshal-8                   1000000          1012 ns/op         319 B/op      10 allocs/op
BenchmarkProtobufMarshal-8                   2000000           901 ns/op         200 B/op       7 allocs/op
BenchmarkProtobufUnmarshal-8                 2000000           692 ns/op         192 B/op      10 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoprotobufMarshal-8                 3000000           506 ns/op         312 B/op       4 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoprotobufUnmarshal-8               2000000           691 ns/op         432 B/op       9 allocs/op
BenchmarkGogoprotobufMarshal-8              10000000           152 ns/op          64 B/op       1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGogoprotobufUnmarshal-8            10000000           221 ns/op          96 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkColferMarshal-8                    10000000           137 ns/op          64 B/op       1 allocs/op
BenchmarkColferUnmarshal-8                  10000000           183 ns/op         112 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeMarshal-8                   10000000           166 ns/op          80 B/op       2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnmarshal-8                 10000000           181 ns/op         112 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnsafeMarshal-8             20000000           104 ns/op          48 B/op       1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnsafeUnmarshal-8           10000000           144 ns/op          96 B/op       3 allocs/op
BenchmarkXDR2Marshal-8                      10000000           168 ns/op          64 B/op       1 allocs/op
BenchmarkXDR2Unmarshal-8                    10000000           143 ns/op          32 B/op       2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvroMarshal-8                      500000          2403 ns/op        1030 B/op      31 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvroUnmarshal-8                    200000          5876 ns/op        3437 B/op      87 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2TextMarshal-8                 500000          2797 ns/op        1326 B/op      20 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2TextUnmarshal-8               500000          2665 ns/op         807 B/op      34 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2BinaryMarshal-8              2000000           922 ns/op         510 B/op      11 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoAvro2BinaryUnmarshal-8            2000000           989 ns/op         576 B/op      13 allocs/op
PASS
ok      github.com/alecthomas/go_serialization_benchmarks   91.733s

Issues

The benchmarks can also be run with validation enabled.

VALIDATE=1 go test -bench='.*' ./

Unfortunately, several of the serializers exhibit issues:

1. (minor) BSON drops sub-microsecond precision from time.Time.
2. (minor) Ugorji Binc Codec drops the timezone name (eg. "EST" -> "-0500") from time.Time.

--- FAIL: BenchmarkBsonUnmarshal-8
    serialization_benchmarks_test.go:115: unmarshaled object differed:
        &{20b999e3621bd773 2016-01-19 14:05:02.469416459 -0800 PST f017c8e9de 4 true 0.20887343719329818}
        &{20b999e3621bd773 2016-01-19 14:05:02.469 -0800 PST f017c8e9de 4 true 0.20887343719329818}
--- FAIL: BenchmarkUgorjiCodecBincUnmarshal-8
    serialization_benchmarks_test.go:115: unmarshaled object differed:
        &{20a1757ced6b488e 2016-01-19 14:05:15.69474534 -0800 PST 71f3bf4233 0 false 0.8712180830484527}
        &{20a1757ced6b488e 2016-01-19 14:05:15.69474534 -0800 -0800 71f3bf4233 0 false 0.8712180830484527}

All other fields are correct however.

Additionally, while not a correctness issue, FlatBuffers, ProtoBuffers and Cap'N'Proto do not support time types directly. In the benchmarks an int64 value is used to hold a UnixNano timestamp.