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 Python 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
lua 1.lua 6633ms 183ms 291.4MB 6527ms 87ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
python 1.py 11298ms 16ms 42.2MB 11140ms 137ms cpython 3.12.3
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
lua 1.lua 578ms 29ms 24.9MB 553ms 3ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
python 1.py 1013ms 82ms 14.0MB 993ms 3ms cpython 3.12.3
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
python 1.py 24ms 2.6ms 10.2MB 16ms 0ms cpython 3.12.3

merkletrees

Input: 17

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
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
python 1.py 34848ms 576ms 107.3MB 34757ms 73ms cpython 3.12.3

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
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
python 1.py 5815ms 33ms 34.4MB 5790ms 7ms cpython 3.12.3

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
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
python 1.py 39068ms 95ms 10.2MB 39050ms 0ms cpython 3.12.3
python 2.py 41152ms 307ms 11.3MB 41133ms 0ms cpython 3.12.3

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
lua 4.lua 1941ms 5.9ms 1.8MB 1927ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
python 1.py 3811ms 20ms 10.2MB 3797ms 0ms cpython 3.12.3
python 2.py 4147ms 89ms 10.2MB 4137ms 0ms cpython 3.12.3

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
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
python 8.py timeout (300s) — — — — cpython 3.12.3

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
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
python 8.py timeout (120s) — — — — cpython 3.12.3

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
lua 1.lua 10267ms 17ms 1.7MB 10257ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
python 8-m.py 34942ms 580ms 20.5MB 135877ms 227ms cpython 3.12.3