<p>I had some time over the weekend, and I decided that I would benchmark some
web frameworks for possible backend API to work with in the future. I copied
<a href="https://github.com/koajs/koa/blob/master/benchmarks/run">how Koa.js does its benchmark</a>.
I prepared <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/">Ruby on Rails</a>,
<a href="http://restify.com/">Restify</a>, and <a href="http://sparkjava.com/">Spark</a> to be
benchmarked. You can see <a href="https://github.com/serv/framework-benchmarks">the code hosted on GitHub here</a>.</p>
<p>Here are the results of the benchmarks. The number represents requests / second.
Higher is better.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>frameworks</th>
<th>req/s</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>ruby on rails</td>
<td>48.73</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>restify</td>
<td>8117.63</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>spark</td>
<td>32634.10</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/gOoneii.png" alt="Web framework benchmarked"></p>
<p>I knew Ruby on Rails is slow, but I had no idea that it's this slow. And on
the other hand, I knew Java web frameworks are generally fast, but I had no
idea that Spark is that fast! And Restify occupies a sweet spot between
Ruby on Rails and Spark.</p>
<p>We can draw some conclusions from the findings.</p>
<ul>
<li>Use Spark for very highly trafficked microservices that requires requests
to be served at low latency</li>
<li>Use Restify for all kinds of backend API when you want to leverage a vast
catalog of Node.js packages and great development tools</li>
<li>Reserve using Ruby on Rails for product oriented application only.
I would not recommend Ruby on Rails for backend API that needs to
serve a large traffic.</li>
</ul>


frameworks	req/s
ruby on rails	48.73
restify	8117.63
spark	32634.10