Programming Language and compiler
Benchmarks

Results for 38 of 40 languages from this run on actest1.

Unavailable in this run: Hack, Lisp. Follow the run link for failure details.

Lua VS Crystal benchmarks

Current benchmark data was generated on Sun Sep 27 2026, full log can be found HERE

CONTRIBUTIONS are WELCOME!

[x86_64][4 cores] Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3687U CPU @ 2.10GHz (Model 58)

* -m in a file name stands for multi-threading or multi-processing

* -i in a file name stands for direct intrinsics usage. (Usage of simd intrinsics via libraries is not counted)

* -ffi in a file name stands for non-stdlib FFI usage

* (You may find time < time(user) + time(sys) for some non-parallelized programs, the overhead is from GC or JIT compiler, which are allowed to take advantage of multi-cores as that's more close to real-world scenarios.)

binarytrees

Input: 18

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 2516ms 29ms 57.1MB 2487ms 10ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 6633ms 183ms 291.4MB 6527ms 87ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 16420ms 378ms 152.3MB 16370ms 30ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 223ms 20ms 9.5MB 207ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 578ms 29ms 24.9MB 553ms 3ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 1185ms 23ms 17.5MB 1173ms 0ms lua 5.4.6

helloworld

Input: QwQ

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 1.6ms 0.3ms 2.4MB 0ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 2.2ms 0.4ms 1.8MB 0ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
crystal 1.cr 2.8ms 0.5ms 2.5MB 0ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2

merkletrees

Input: 17

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 1329ms 15ms 65.7MB 1307ms 10ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 15068ms 464ms 183.4MB 14980ms 70ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 18968ms 144ms 107.9MB 18917ms 33ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 270ms 3.0ms 23.9MB 253ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 2066ms 2.3ms 36.3MB 2040ms 7ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 3347ms 133ms 28.8MB 3327ms 3ms lua 5.4.6

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 2.cr 632ms 1.1ms 3.0MB 620ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
crystal 1.cr 636ms 6.6ms 3.0MB 623ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 4.lua 1312ms 8.1ms 1.6MB 1303ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 4.lua 19839ms 364ms 1.8MB 19823ms 0ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 2.cr 68ms 0.7ms 3.0MB 57ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
crystal 1.cr 68ms 2.8ms 3.0MB 60ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 4.lua 139ms 4.9ms 1.5MB 127ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 4.lua 1941ms 5.9ms 1.8MB 1927ms 0ms lua 5.4.6

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 11056ms 4.8ms 3.9MB 11043ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 11058ms 4.0ms 2.6MB 11047ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 167091ms 2385ms 2.9MB 167067ms 3ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 2769ms 0.6ms 3.9MB 2757ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 2774ms 9.6ms 2.7MB 2760ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 41466ms 392ms 2.6MB 41447ms 0ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 2000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 698ms 2.1ms 1.5MB 687ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
crystal 1.cr 699ms 4.1ms 3.5MB 687ms 0ms crystal 1.11.2
lua 1.lua 10267ms 17ms 1.7MB 10257ms 0ms lua 5.4.6