gaurishhs

Benchmarking bun install and sqlite

What is bun?

Bun is a new JavaScript runtime that uses Webkit and JavaScript Core unlike Node.js which uses V8. Bun had it’s first stable release 2 months ago and it’s already on 1.0.9 now.

Benchmark Environment

Benchmark Process

First, let’s update apt and install the runtimes.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install unzip nodejs npm hyperfine

This will install Node.js and npm. Now, Let’s install bun.

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

and pnpm

curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -

and Deno

curl -fsSL https://deno.land/x/install/install.sh | sh

don’t forget to add deno to your path.

Now, Let’s create a new directory

mkdir test 
cd test

Now, I will continue with a package.json which will install about 1.5k+ random dependencies. The package.json can be found here.

Before benchmarking let’s get rid of the caches

bun pm cache rm
npm cache clean --force
rm -rf $(pnpm store path)

Now let’s run the benchmark:

hyperfine --prepare 'rm -rf node_modules rm -rf bun.lockb rm -rf package-lock.json rm -rf pnpm-lock.yaml sync; echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' 'bun i' 'npm i --no-scripts' 'pnpm i --no-scripts' --export-json output.json --runs 1 --show-output

It makes sure to have node_modules, lockfiles deleted and runs on cold cache.

Here’s the summary:

Summary
  'bun i' ran
    2.36 times faster than 'pnpm i --no-scripts'
   10.64 times faster than 'npm i --no-scripts'

Here’s a video recording of the benchmark:

Now let’s run some other benchmarks.

SQLite Benchmark

Move to the parent directory

cd .. 
mkdir sqlite-benchmark
cd sqlite-benchmark

Clone the sqlite folder:

bunx degit https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/bench/sqlite .

Now, install deps

bun run deps

Now, let’s run the benchmark:

bun run bench

Here’s the result:

$ bun run bun.js
cpu: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8124M CPU @ 3.00GHz
runtime: bun 1.0.9 (x64-linux)
 
benchmark                        time (avg)             (min … max)       p75       p99      p995
------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
SELECT * FROM "Order"         30.43 ms/iter   (29.74 ms … 32.99 ms)  30.75 ms  32.99 ms  32.99 ms
SELECT * FROM "Product"       72.06 µs/iter    (66.88 µs … 1.25 ms)     70 µs  89.34 µs  99.25 µs
SELECT * FROM "OrderDetail"  341.95 ms/iter (334.57 ms … 356.74 ms) 342.74 ms 356.74 ms 356.74 ms
$ node node.mjs
cpu: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8124M CPU @ 3.00GHz
runtime: node v18.13.0 (x64-linux)
 
benchmark                        time (avg)             (min … max)       p75       p99      p995
------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
SELECT * FROM "Order"        108.83 ms/iter (108.47 ms … 109.25 ms)    109 ms 109.25 ms 109.25 ms
SELECT * FROM "Product"      314.35 µs/iter (309.37 µs … 642.47 µs) 314.31 µs 325.44 µs 327.61 µs
SELECT * FROM "OrderDetail"     2.12 s/iter       (2.04 s … 2.42 s)    2.09 s    2.42 s    2.42 s

Bun is 3.5x faster than Nodejs.

Conclusion

Bun is something that will not just be a drop-in replacement for Node, There’s a lot coming up for bun which will change the way we write code. It will also improve Node. However we should not compare Bun to Golang or Rust, It’s a JavaScript runtime and it’s meant to be used with JavaScript. Golang and Rust are not meant to be compared to JavaScript. They do their job well and so does JavaScript. They excel in their own domains.

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