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 Java 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
java 2.java 782ms 124ms 569.1MB 957ms 133ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2.java 1276ms 44ms 1086.4MB 900ms 603ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 2.java 192ms 18ms 167.6MB 260ms 27ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2.java 378ms 84ms 239.8MB 267ms 200ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 1.java 93ms 5.3ms 44.3MB 116ms 12ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 1.java 165ms 3.2ms 42.8MB 128ms 88ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12

merkletrees

Input: 17

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
java 1.java 639ms 19ms 672.5MB 787ms 113ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 1.java 1091ms 23ms 952.0MB 723ms 573ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 1-m.java 244ms 6.2ms 203.4MB 380ms 43ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 1.java 494ms 111ms 341.8MB 367ms 237ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 1.java 836ms 7.8ms 45.3MB 903ms 20ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 1.java 948ms 8.1ms 42.6MB 943ms 97ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
lua 4.lua 1312ms 8.1ms 1.6MB 1303ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
java 2.java 2391ms 105ms 668.4MB 2600ms 133ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2.java 4242ms 39ms 2140.1MB 3463ms 1093ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
lua 4.lua 139ms 4.9ms 1.5MB 127ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
java 1-m.java 192ms 4.7ms 45.4MB 267ms 23ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 1.java 284ms 11ms 45.1MB 267ms 110ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
java 2-m.java 470ms 6.5ms 319.0MB 713ms 53ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2.java 889ms 1.9ms 558.5MB 850ms 327ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 2-m.java 6269ms 79ms 47.7MB 24327ms 20ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2-m.java 6422ms 61ms 45.2MB 24347ms 163ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 2-m.java 1680ms 11ms 46.0MB 6267ms 40ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2-m.java 1805ms 63ms 44.1MB 6343ms 120ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
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
java 2-m.java 551ms 4.8ms 48.2MB 1853ms 20ms openjdk 21.0.12
java 2-m.java 646ms 7.1ms 45.7MB 1900ms 103ms openjdk/zgc 21.0.12
lua 1.lua 698ms 2.1ms 1.5MB 687ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 10267ms 17ms 1.7MB 10257ms 0ms lua 5.4.6