Fiber (Go) vs. Nickel.rs (Rust): A Performance Showdown in 'Hello World'

UpdatedApril 9, 2023

Cloud Native Pilgrim | Kubernetes Enthusiast | Serverless Believer | Customer Experience Architect @ Pulumi | (he/him) | CK{A,AD} |

Part of seriesLearning Rust

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Join the discussion

Hoh Shen Yien3y ago

Interesting benchmark! Just wondering if you have any context for why the max response time for Nickel.rs can go up to 30s?

Engin Diri3y ago

I can only explain it, that my web server can't handle all the requests/s and timeout. I see some timeouts in the result of bombardier:

Bombarding http://127.0.0.1:6767 with 5000000 request(s) using 50 connection(s)
 5000000 / 5000000 [==================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================] 100.00% 106194/s 47s
Done!
Statistics        Avg      Stdev        Max
  Reqs/sec    106292.69   44491.73  224577.53
  Latency      393.78us    91.33ms     33.91s
  Latency Distribution
     50%    43.00us
     75%    63.00us
     90%   103.00us
     95%   170.00us
     99%   642.00us
  HTTP codes:
    1xx - 0, 2xx - 4999962, 3xx - 0, 4xx - 0, 5xx - 0
    others - 38
  Errors:
    dial tcp 127.0.0.1:6767: connect: operation timed out - 38
  Throughput:    21.90MB/s

Hoh Shen Yien3y ago

Engin Diri It's interesting that the max delay is much lesser in Fiber, thanks for the info! :D

Learning Rust

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90 posts

Introduction

In this article, I want to compare the performance of two different web frameworks for Rust and Go. Both frameworks are very similar in their design (all are inspired by Express.js) and both claim to be the fastest web framework (blazing fast). Both frameworks are easy to use, which is a big plus for me (I am not the smartest guy in the world, so easy is good).

The Competitors in detail

Nickele.rs (Rust)

For Rust, I have chosen the Nickel.rs framework. It is a minimal and lightweight framework for web apps in Rust. It is inspired by Express.js and provides a lot of features like flexible routing, middleware, JSON handling, and more. And it's blazingly fast!

https://github.com/nickel-org/nickel.rs

Fiber (Go)

As a contender for Go, I have chosen the Fiber framework. This framework is also inspired by Express.js and is built on top of Fasthttp. It has a lot of features like middleware, routing, WebSockets, and more. And it claims to have extreme performance and a small memory footprint.

https://github.com/gofiber/fiber

The Battle 🥊

The specs of my machine are Apple M1 Max (10 Core CPU) with 32GB of RAM.

The Tests will be written in bombardier and will be executed for 50, 100 and 500 concurrent users with executing 5M requests.

https://github.com/codesenberg/bombardier

I use the following versions:

Go: go1.20.3 darwin/arm64
Rust: rustc 1.65.0 (897e37553 2022-11-02)

The Test Code

`Nickel.rs (Rust)`

#[macro_use]
extern crate nickel;

use nickel::Nickel;

fn main() {
    let mut server = Nickel::new();

    server.utilize(router! {
        get "**" => |_req, _res| {
            "Hello world!"
        }
    });

    server.listen("127.0.0.1:6767").unwrap();
}

`Fiber (Go)`

package main

import "github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2"

func main() {
    app := fiber.New()

    app.Get("/", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
        return c.SendString("Hello, World 🐹!")
    })

    app.Listen(":3000")
}

The Results

50 concurrent users

	`Fiber (Go)`	`Nickel.rs (Rust)`
Time taken	140s	47s
Request per second	35378.09	106293.29
Mean response time	1.41 ms	0.39396 ms
Median response time	0.845 ms	0.049 ms
90th percentile	3.44 ms	0.110 ms
Max response time	107.07 ms	33.91 s
CPU	35%	18%
Memory	11.102 MB	4 MB

100 concurrent users

	`Fiber (Go)`	`Nickel.rs (Rust)`
Time taken	184s	51s
Request per second	27073.55	97200.03
Mean response time	3.69 ms	0.92 ms
Median response time	2.90 ms	0.04 ms
90th percentile	7.94 ms	0.09400 ms
Max response time	136.02 ms	29.91 s
CPU	35%	18%
Memory	13 MB	4 MB

500 concurrent users

	`Fiber (Go)`	`Nickel.rs (Rust)`
Time taken	189s	1m
Request per second	26359.05	83084.80
Mean response time	18.97 ms	5.00 ms
Median response time	18.27 ms	0.04 ms
90th percentile	31.78 ms	0.085 ms
Max response time	185.04 ms	32.25 s
CPU	35%	17%
Memory	29 MB	4 MB

Conclusion 🎉

Based on the data provided, Nickel.rs (Rust) is the winner. There are several reasons for this:

🚀 Faster response times: Nickel.rs (Rust) has lower mean, median, and 90th percentile response times across all levels of concurrent users compared to Fiber (Go).
⚡ Higher request per second: Nickel.rs (Rust) can handle more requests per second than Fiber (Go) in each test.
🌡️ Lower CPU usage: Nickel.rs (Rust) uses less CPU (about half) compared to Fiber (Go) in all tests.
🧠 Lower memory usage: Nickel.rs (Rust) uses significantly less memory (about 3 to 7 times less) compared to Fiber ( Go) in all tests.

In conclusion, 🏆 Rust (specifically Nickel.rs) outperforms Go (Fiber) in terms of response times, request handling, CPU usage, and memory consumption, making it the winner in this comparison.

Resources

Gopher from cover: https://dribbble.com/shots/14749679-Golang-gopher-master-karate-ninja-cool-sticker-shirt-print
Rust crab from cover: https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1001647428.6797/st,small,507x507-pad,600x600,f8f8f8.jpg

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Comments (1)

Learning Rust

Observability Made Easy: Building a RESTful API with Actix Web and OpenTelemetry

More from this blog

Introduction

The Competitors in detail

Nickele.rs (Rust)

Fiber (Go)

The Battle 🥊

The Test Code

Nickel.rs (Rust)

Fiber (Go)

The Results

50 concurrent users

100 concurrent users

500 concurrent users

Conclusion 🎉

Resources

`Nickel.rs (Rust)`

`Fiber (Go)`