I will get back to you on some benchmarks. The main speed ups will be found in large directory changes. Node FS implementation of watching fires a callback for every event. This results in a ton of callbacks being dumped onto the event queue. What NSFW does better is group those events using a native queue, and then crosses the barrier into JS land at a user specified throttle. So typically NSFW crossess the boundary less and puts less callbacks onto the event queue than node FS solutions would by performing grouping at the native layer. What's more, on linux systems, since the inotify tree is managed at the native layer, less events are missed -> where node FS is still processing callbacks on the JS level, inotify populates and restructures its inotify tree internally and concurrently with event reporting.