This is a test suite for benchmarking various Go 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
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'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.
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
}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
The benchmarks can also be run with validation enabled.
VALIDATE=1 go test -bench='.*' ./Unfortunately, several of the serializers exhibit issues:
- (minor) BSON drops sub-microsecond precision from
time.Time. - (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.