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
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
}Results with Go 1.6 on a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 (MacBook Pro Retina 15-inch, late 2013):
benchmark iter time/iter bytes alloc allocs
--------- ---- --------- ----------- ------
BenchmarkMsgpMarshal-8 5000000 269 ns/op 128 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkMsgpUnmarshal-8 3000000 498 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkVmihailencoMsgpackMarshal-8 1000000 1910 ns/op 352 B/op 5 allocs/op
BenchmarkVmihailencoMsgpackUnmarshal-8 1000000 2154 ns/op 352 B/op 13 allocs/op
BenchmarkJsonMarshal-8 500000 3714 ns/op 1232 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkJsonUnmarshal-8 500000 4125 ns/op 416 B/op 7 allocs/op
BenchmarkEasyJsonMarshal-8 1000000 1920 ns/op 784 B/op 5 allocs/op
BenchmarkEasyJsonUnmarshal-8 1000000 1659 ns/op 160 B/op 4 allocs/op
BenchmarkBsonMarshal-8 1000000 1886 ns/op 392 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkBsonUnmarshal-8 500000 2487 ns/op 248 B/op 21 allocs/op
BenchmarkGobMarshal-8 1000000 1282 ns/op 48 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGobUnmarshal-8 1000000 1306 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkXdrMarshal-8 500000 2740 ns/op 455 B/op 20 allocs/op
BenchmarkXdrUnmarshal-8 1000000 2041 ns/op 239 B/op 11 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecMsgpackMarshal-8 500000 3316 ns/op 2753 B/op 8 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecMsgpackUnmarshal-8 500000 3289 ns/op 3008 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecBincMarshal-8 500000 3237 ns/op 2785 B/op 8 allocs/op
BenchmarkUgorjiCodecBincUnmarshal-8 500000 3631 ns/op 3168 B/op 9 allocs/op
BenchmarkSerealMarshal-8 300000 4453 ns/op 912 B/op 21 allocs/op
BenchmarkSerealUnmarshal-8 500000 3889 ns/op 1008 B/op 34 allocs/op
BenchmarkBinaryMarshal-8 1000000 1841 ns/op 256 B/op 16 allocs/op
BenchmarkBinaryUnmarshal-8 1000000 1945 ns/op 336 B/op 22 allocs/op
BenchmarkFlatbuffersMarshal-8 3000000 411 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFlatBuffersUnmarshal-8 5000000 354 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProtoMarshal-8 2000000 578 ns/op 56 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProtoUnmarshal-8 3000000 515 ns/op 200 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProto2Marshal-8 1000000 1427 ns/op 244 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkCapNProto2Unmarshal-8 1000000 1325 ns/op 320 B/op 6 allocs/op
BenchmarkHproseMarshal-8 1000000 1294 ns/op 479 B/op 8 allocs/op
BenchmarkHproseUnmarshal-8 1000000 1715 ns/op 320 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkProtobufMarshal-8 1000000 1554 ns/op 200 B/op 7 allocs/op
BenchmarkProtobufUnmarshal-8 1000000 1055 ns/op 192 B/op 10 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoprotobufMarshal-8 2000000 746 ns/op 312 B/op 4 allocs/op
BenchmarkGoprotobufUnmarshal-8 2000000 978 ns/op 432 B/op 9 allocs/op
BenchmarkGogoprotobufMarshal-8 10000000 211 ns/op 64 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGogoprotobufUnmarshal-8 5000000 289 ns/op 96 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkColferMarshal-8 10000000 178 ns/op 64 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkColferUnmarshal-8 10000000 235 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeMarshal-8 5000000 212 ns/op 80 B/op 2 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnmarshal-8 5000000 273 ns/op 112 B/op 3 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnsafeMarshal-8 10000000 135 ns/op 48 B/op 1 allocs/op
BenchmarkGencodeUnsafeUnmarshal-8 10000000 198 ns/op 96 B/op 3 allocs/op
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.