Multi-Language Serializer Benchmark

Compare 200+ serialization libraries across 13 languages.

Start here
Home	Documentation
Numbers	Live dashboard
Experiments	One-question tests
Learn	Serialization 101–401
Benchmarks	How we measure · Metrics

_{The live Dashboard: pick a language and data type, then read speed vs size and the ranking.}

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Who it is for

Audience	Use case	Course
Computer science students	Theory, history, worked examples	101, 201
System integrators	Pick formats that fit payloads and runtimes	301
Researchers	Reproducible measurement and experiments	Methodology · 301
Serializer authors	Add a codec, version A/B, regression checks	Adding a serializer · 401

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Supported languages

• C — 20
• C# (.NET) — 38 serializers registered
• C++ — 27+
• Go — 19
• Java — 18
• JavaScript — 20
• Kotlin — 26
• Mojo — 6
• PHP — 15
• Python — 16
• Rust — 16
• Swift — 14
• Zig — 17

Adding a language · Adding a serializer.

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Try it: benchmark Python serializers in ~60 seconds

Requires a recent Python 3 and uv (or pip). No Docker.

git clone https://github.com/leo-gan/GLD.SerializerBenchmark.git
cd GLD.SerializerBenchmark

./scripts/check-host-requirements.sh python   # optional: see what's missing
./scripts/install-host-requirements.sh python # optional: user-local toolchains

cd python && ./scripts/run-benchmarks.sh smoke
# → logs/python/YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.csv

Then open the Python Dashboard (or run analyze-benchmarks -l python after installing the analysis package) to review the run.

Prefer Rust? ./scripts/run-all-benchmarks.sh --mode smoke --lang rust

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Quick start

Benchmark runners run natively on the host (no Docker). Prepare toolchains once, then run benchmarks (project deps like uv sync / npm install still happen inside each runner).

# 1) Host toolchains (compilers/runtimes only)
./scripts/check-host-requirements.sh
./scripts/install-host-requirements.sh
./scripts/install-host-requirements.sh csharp   # one language

# 2) Smoke one language
./python/scripts/run-benchmarks.sh smoke
# or: ./rust/scripts/run-benchmarks.sh smoke

# Orchestrator: all languages or one language
./scripts/run-all-benchmarks.sh --mode all-single
./scripts/run-all-benchmarks.sh --mode full --lang rust

# Analysis package (writes reports/; Dashboard via sync-data.py)
cd analysis && uv pip install -e .   # or: pip install -e .
analyze-benchmarks
analyze-benchmarks -l python
analyze-benchmarks --compare-a rust:2026-07-09-194122 --compare-b rust:latest

Modes: smoke (2 reps) · all-single (10) · full (100) · research (500).

analyze-benchmarks writes reports/; Dashboard via sync-data.py. Review and commit before publish-docs deploys the site.

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Test data

Shared data types: message, document, telemetry, strings, and event.

Catalog and defaults: schemas/data_catalog_v2.yaml. Run matrices: config/library/.
Docs: Test data.

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Statistics

• Analysis methodology
• Metrics catalog

Compare serializers within one language (and ideally one category). Cross-language absolute times are directional only — runtimes and GCs differ.