Recursive Fibonacci Benchmark using top languages on Github

Top 10: JavaScript, Python, Java, TypeScript, C#, Php, C++, C, Shell, Ruby reference

Others: Go, Rust, Swift, Crystal, Pony, Ada, Pascal, Fortran, Kotlin, Clojure, Scala, Mono, R, Dart, Julia, D, Nim, Cython, Python3, PyPy, Ruby jit, OCaml, Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, Elixir, Escript, Dart, Scheme, Lua, Perl, Perl6, Bash, Emoji

The code performs a recursive fibonacci to the 47th position with the result of 2,971,215,073.

Fibonacci can be written many different ways. The goal of this project is to compare how each language handles the exact same code.

Here is the Ruby version:

def fib(n)
  return n if n <= 1
  fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
end

puts fib(47)

Here is the Crystal version:

def fib(n)
  return n if n <= 1
  fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
end

puts fib(47_u64)

To keep a level playing field, only common "release" flags are used in the compilation step. This allows for compiler optimizations like inlining and constant propogation but removes anything considered dangerous i.e. bypassing out of bounds checks.

All tests are run on:

• Hetzner CCX23 - 4 vCPU
• Processor: Intel Xeon 3.1Ghz
• Memory: 16 GiB
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• Docker Base Image: ubuntu:24.04

How to run them

You can run the tests using Docker: docker run -it drujensen/fib

By default, it will compile and run all languages 5 times. Totals are calculated by adding the average compile and run times.

To only run a subset of the languages, provide a list of extensions and optionally the count:

docker run -it drujensen/fib ./run.sh s,c,cpp,go,rs,swift 5

To run in the background using screen:

screen
docker run drujensen/fib > results.txt 2>&1

• Detach from the session by pressing Ctrl+A followed by D.
• You can reattach to the session later with:

screen -r

NOTE: Please see issues with benchmarks like this. Its original goal was to compare at a macro level how much faster Crystal is to Ruby. Any language faster than Assembly is performing unrolling type optimizations. Modern languages like Go, Swift and Crystal have bounds checking which have safety built-in, but also have a cost associated with runtime performance.

Results

Last benchmark was ran on December 05, 2024

Natively compiled, statically typed

| Language | RunTime | Run | CompileTime | Compile | Ext | |----------|---------|-----|-------------|---------|-----| | C | 4.723 | ./fib | 0.112 | gcc -O3 -o fib fib.c | c | | C++ | 4.750 | ./fib | 0.139 | g++ -O3 -o fib fib.cpp | cpp | | V | 4.718 | ./fib | 4.450 | v -prod -o fib fib.v | v | | Fortran | 6.204 | ./fib | 0.130 | gfortran -O3 -o fib fib.f03 | f03 | | Ada | 6.591 | ./fib | 0.220 | gnat make -O3 -gnatp -o fib fib.adb | adb | | Rust | 7.750 | ./fib | 0.358 | rustc -C opt-level=3 fib.rs | rs | | Mojo | 8.706 | ./fib | 0.241 | mojo build fib.mojo | mojo | | Odin | 8.751 | ./fib | 0.087 | odin build fib.odin -file -0:speed | odin | | Zig | 9.299 | ./fib | 6.882 | zig build-exe -OReleaseFast ./fib.zig | zig | | Assembly | 9.342 | ./fib | 0.025 | gcc -no-pie -O3 -o fib fib.s | s | | Pony | 10.226 | ./fib | 0.879 | ponyc -s -b fib -p ./fib.pony | pony | | Pascal | 10.419 | ./fib | 0.041 | fpc -O3 -Si ./fib.pas | pas | | OCaml | 15.831 | ./fib | 0.187 | ocamlopt -O3 -o fib fib.ml | ml | | Swift | 17.390 | ./fib | 1.411 | swiftc -O fib.swift | swift | | Crystal | 17.420 | ./fib | 3.106 | crystal build --release fib.cr | cr | | Go | 17.842 | ./fib | 1.107 | go build fib.go | go | | D | 17.851 | ./fib | 0.342 | dmd -release -of=fib fib.d | d | | Haskell | 18.094 | ./fib | 0.001 | rm ./fib.o && ghc -O3 -o fib fib.hs | hs | | Lisp | 24.747 | ./fib | 0.979 | sbcl --load fib.lisp | lisp | | Dart Compiled | 30.149 | ./fib | 1.558 | dart compile exe -o fib ./fib.dart | dartc | | Cobol | 4380.596 | ./fib | 0.133 | cobc -x -O3 -o fib ./fib.cbl | cbl |

VM compiled bytecode, statically typed

| Language | RunTime | Run | CompileTime | Compile | Ext | |----------|---------|-----|-------------|---------|-----| | C# | 10.744 | dotnet ./bin/fib.dll | 2.015 | dotnet build -c Release -o ./bin | cs | | Java | 12.307 | java Fib | 0.733 | javac Fib.java | java | | Kotlin | 12.212 | java FibKt | 4.074 | kotlinc Fib.kt | kt | | Scala | 13.153 | scala Fib | 2.682 | scalac Fib.scala | scala | | Erlang | 27.976 | erl -noinput -noshell -s fib | 0.402 | erlc +native +'{hipe,[o3]}' fib.erl | erl | | Groovy | 68.604 | groovy Fib | 1.519 | groovyc Fib.groovy | groovy |

VM compiled before execution, mixed/dynamically typed

| Language | RunTime | Run | Ext | |----------|---------|-----|-----| | Clojure | 17.815 | clojure -M fib.cljc | cljc | | Julia | 18.000 | julia -O3 fib.jl | jl | | Bun | 21.312 | bun fib.js | bun | | Dart | 29.984 | dart fib.dart | dart | | Node | 34.736 | node fib.js | js | | Elixir | 35.243 | ERL_COMPILER_OPTIONS='[native,{hipe, [o3]}]' elixir Fib.exs | exs | | Lua Jit | 37.837 | luajit fib.lua | luajit | | Python (PyPy) | 54.078 | pypy fib.py | pypy | | Ruby (jit) | 81.454 | ruby --jit fib.rb | rbjit |

Interpreted, dynamically typed

| Language | RunTime | Run | Ext | |----------|---------|-----|-----| | Escript | 28.380 | escript fib.es | es | | Scheme | 102.887 | guile fib.scm | scm | | Php | 157.312 | php fib.php | php | | Lua | 203.702 | lua fib.lua | lua | | Ruby | 393.625 | ruby fib.rb | rb | | Python | 423.427 | python fib.py | py | | Janet | 479.663 | janet ./fib.janet | janet | | Perl | 1490.416 | perl fib.pl | pl | | Raku | 1672.015 | rakudo fib.raku | raku | | Tcl | 2230.883 | tclsh fib.tcl | tcl | | R | 2575.249 | R -f fib.r | r |

Versions

All compilers are installed using apt or asdf on Ubuntu 24.04 docker image:

|Language | Version | |---|---| | ada | 13.2.0 | | assembly | 13.2.0 | | bash | 5.2.21 | | bun | 1.1.38 | | crystal | 1.14.0 | | clojure | 1.12.0.1488 | | dart | 3.5.4 | | dmd | 2.109.1 | | dotnet | 9.0.101 | | elixir | 1.17.3 | | elm | 0.19.1 | | erlang | 27.1.2 | | fortran | 13.2.0 | | g++ | 13.2.0 | | gcc | 13.2.0 | | gnucobol | 3.2.0 | | golang | 1.23.2 | | groovy | 4.0.24 | | guile | 3.0.10 | | haskell | 9.8.3 | | janet | 1.36.0 | | java | openjdk-23 | | julia | 1.11.1 | | K | 3.6 | | kotlin | 2.1.0 | | ldc | 1.39.0 | | lua | 5.4.7 | | luajit | 2.1.1 | | mojo | 24.5.0 | | nim | 2.2.0 | | nodejs | 23.3.0 | | ocaml | 5.2.1 | | odin | dev-2024-11 | | pascal | 3.2.2 | | perl | 5.40.0 | | php | 8.4.1 | | pony | 0.58.7 | | powershell-core | 7.4.6 | | python | 3.12.0 | | pypy | 7.3.17 | | r | 4.4.2 | | rakudo | 2024.10 | | ruby | 3.3.6 | | rust | 1.83.0 | | sbcl | 2.4.11 | | scala | 3.3.4 | | swift | 6.0.2 | | tcl | 9.0.0 | | v | 0.4.8 | | zig | 0.13.0 |