Benchmarks

hitlimit is designed for performance. Here are real benchmarks you can reproduce on your own hardware.

TL;DR

Use Case	Recommended Store	Expected Performance
Single server, high traffic	Memory	400k+ ops/sec
Single server, need persistence	SQLite	35k+ ops/sec
Multiple servers	Redis	12k+ ops/sec
Bun runtime	bun:sqlite	95k+ ops/sec

Methodology

All benchmarks follow these principles:

Reproducible - Anyone can run the same benchmarks
Fair - Compare apples to apples
Real - Numbers from actual tests, not estimates
Documented - Exact hardware, software, and methodology

Test Environment

Machine:    MacBook Pro M2 / AWS c6i.xlarge (4 vCPU, 8GB RAM)
Node.js:    v20.10.0
Bun:        v1.0.20
Redis:      7.2 (Docker)
SQLite:     better-sqlite3 v11.0.0 / bun:sqlite (native)

Methodology:
- Each benchmark runs 3 times, median reported
- Warmup: 1,000 requests before measurement
- Test: 100,000 requests (or 10 seconds, whichever first)
- Single-threaded to measure raw library performance
- Memory measured via process.memoryUsage()

Store Performance

Memory Store

Best for single-instance deployments where persistence isn't needed.

Memory Store Benchmark (Node.js 20)

400,000+ ops/sec

0.002ms avg latency

0.01ms p99 latency

~50 bytes per key

SQLite Store

Best for single-instance deployments where you need persistence.

SQLite Store Benchmark (Node.js 20, :memory:)

35,000+ ops/sec

0.025ms avg latency

0.15ms p99 latency

Redis Store

Best for distributed deployments with multiple server instances.

Redis Store Benchmark (Node.js 20, Redis 7.2 local)

12,000+ ops/sec

0.08ms avg latency

0.35ms p99 latency

Note: Network latency adds ~1-5ms for remote Redis

Bun SQLite (bun:sqlite)

Bun's native SQLite is significantly faster than Node.js's better-sqlite3.

bun:sqlite Store Benchmark (Bun 1.0.20)

95,000+ ops/sec

0.01ms avg latency

0.05ms p99 latency

HTTP Overhead

How much does hitlimit slow down your API?

Framework	Without Limiter	With hitlimit (Memory)	Overhead
Express	45,000 req/s	42,000 req/s	7%
Fastify	65,000 req/s	61,000 req/s	6%
Bun.serve	120,000 req/s	105,000 req/s	12%
Elysia	130,000 req/s	115,000 req/s	11%

Comparison with Alternatives

Library	Memory (ops/s)	Redis (ops/s)	Bundle Size
hitlimit	400,000	12,000	~5KB
express-rate-limit	180,000	8,000	~15KB
rate-limiter-flexible	250,000	10,000	~45KB
@nestjs/throttler	150,000	N/A	~20KB

Run Benchmarks Yourself

Terminal

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/JointOps/hitlimit-monorepo
cd hitlimit-monorepo

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Build packages first
pnpm build

# Run all benchmarks
pnpm benchmark

# Run specific benchmark
pnpm benchmark:memory
pnpm benchmark:sqlite
pnpm benchmark:redis

# Run Bun benchmarks
pnpm benchmark:bun

Results are saved to benchmarks/results/latest.json after each run.