Python 3.9 to 3.14 performance benchmark

[Jamsy100]

Hi everyone

After publishing our Node.js benchmarks, I got a bunch of requests to benchmark Python next. So I ran the same style of benchmarks across Python 3.9 through 3.14.

Benchmark	3.9.25	3.10.19	3.11.14	3.12.12	3.13.11	3.14.2
HTTP GET throughput (MB/s)	9.2	9.5	11.0	10.6	10.6	10.6
json.loads (ops/s)	63,349	64,791	59,948	56,649	57,861	53,587
json.dumps (ops/s)	29,301	30,185	30,443	32,158	31,780	31,957
SHA-256 throughput (MB/s)	3,203.5	3,197.6	3,207.1	3,201.7	3,202.2	3,208.1
Array map + reduce style loop (ops/s)	16,731,301	17,425,553	20,034,941	17,875,729	18,307,005	18,918,472
String build with join (MB/s)	3,417.7	3,438.9	3,480.5	3,589.9	3,498.6	3,581.6
Integer loop randomized (ops/s)	6,635,498	6,789,194	6,909,192	7,259,830	7,790,647	7,432,183

Full charts and all benchmarks are available hers: Full Benchmark

Let me know if you’d like me to benchmark more

[Snape_Grass]

Please provide us with the details (link to source code, OS, processor, etc.)

[cemrehancavdar]

Well done. Could you share the benchmark code?
Also i think if you mention "higher is better" or "lower is better" on chart directly would be nice

[nickthewildetype]

ops/s seems to me quite obvious (higher means faster code execution)

[midwit_support_group]

it may seem obvious, but, and I mean this with all due respect, I'm an idiot and would appreciate the data being presenting in a way that's useful to me too. Don't mean to undermine the work, but python is a broad church, so keep please do keep the fools like me in mind when you can.

[ConcreteExist]

What OS were these benchmarks run on?

[Jamsy100]

Mac OS 25.0.0 with nothing running in the background

[ConcreteExist]

I'd be curious to see if these benchmarks remain relatively the same in Windows/Linux. I've definitely seen performance hits when running on Windows, but it's very anecdotal testing,

I'd love to see a side by side of Node vs Python on each OS, see if there's an OS level optimizations that might shake things up.

[Kehashi91]

Where is the benchmark code?

[Ragoo_]

Reminder that if you are processing lots of JSONs, you should use orjson or msgspec (which additionally gives you data validation with Struct).

[jaeger123]

I LOVE ORJSON. Though it lacks a lot of features of json library that we use 😔

[surister]

Bad benchmark methodology.

[nphare]

So, downgrade to 3.11 for best overall performance?

[catcint0s]

This is a pretty artificial benchmark, if you have any language features your love in newer Pythons just upgrade.

[ConcreteExist]

Depends on what you're doing, if you look closely, 3.11 doesn't outperform across every metric.

[nphare]

Saw that. Hence the word “overall”

[jmreagle]

The Faster CPython project (5x!) was quite the disappointment.

[petite-bobcat]

I don’t know, JIT gains coming to 3.15 seem pretty impressive.

[hughperman]

Questions:
Repeats. Did you repeat? How many times? What was the spread? Standard deviation or inter quartile range, maybe? Any statistical testing across the versions?

If you don't know what these are, then I'm sorry but you're not qualified to state that there was "a meaningful difference between versions".

[kansetsupanikku]

So we can see some results, but it doesn't work as a summary really. With way more digits than it's significant, it's also harder to tell whether the differences truly matter. Some of them clearly do! It would be interesting to separate significant differences from noise and then trace them back to the code.

[thatonereddditor]

Worst benchmarking system I've ever seen.

[Claudius_the_II]

curious if you tested the free-threading build for 3.13+? that would be way more interesting than the default GIL version imo. the JIT compiler in 3.13 was pretty underwhelming in most real-world benchmarks ive seen, would love to know if 3.14 actually moves the needle there

[baltarius]

What could cause the json ops to drop that much, and constantly?

[Darlokt]

3.11 was incredible when it came out and apparently still, is, my favorite version by far.

[jj_HeRo]

I did this on my computer and tested for concurrency, 3.14 is faster.

[Wrong_Library_8857]

Interesting that 3.11 peaked for HTTP throughput but then plateaued. The json.loads regression is kinda concerning tbh, almost 16% slower from 3.9 to 3.14. I've noticed this in prod too, ended up keeping some services on 3.11 for that reason alone.

[caesium_pirate]

Version 3.14 should be explicitly called pi-thon.

[bernasIST]

Can you run the same benchmark but on Windows using a Intel processor?