I used Go's benchmarking tool to compare raw routing performance of various frameworks. The handlers all return a simple "Hello World" string. Here are the results:

  PASS
  Benchmark_Routes           100000	     13945 ns/op
  Benchmark_Pat              500000	      6068 ns/op
  Benchmark_GorillaHandler   200000	     11042 ns/op
  Benchmark_Webgo            100000	     26350 ns/op
  ok  	github.com/bradrydzewski/routes/bench	12.605s

I then ran the same benchmark, but this time I modified the handler to serialize a struct to JSON and write to the response. Here are the results:

  Benchmark_Routes              100000	     21446 ns/op
  Benchmark_Pat                 100000	     14130 ns/op
  Benchmark_GorillaHandler      100000	     17735 ns/op
  Benchmark_Webgo                50000	     33726 ns/op
  ok  	github.com/bradrydzewski/routes/bench	9.805s

In the first test, Pat is almost twice as a fast as the Gorilla framework. In the second test, when we added a bit more logic to the handler (marshaling a struct to JSON), Pat was only about 18% faster than Gorilla. In fact, it turns out it takes longer to serialize to JSON (8000ns) than it does for Pat to route and serve the request (6000ns).

Now, imagine I created a third benchmark that did something more complex, like executing a database query and serving the results using the html/template package. There would be a negligible difference in performance across frameworks because routing is not going to be your bottleneck.

I would personally choose my framework not just based on performance, but also based on productivity. One that can help me write code that is easier to test and easier to maintain in the long run.

I think Go is almost the ideal example here, you're right. Go provides a pretty rich "standard library" for writing web serving stuff so it's a good place where you could really imagine writing your performance critical stuff just on the base platform even if you use something like Webgo for the rest of your app.

Some of the other platforms are much less amenable to that since the standard primitives the platform exposes are very primitive indeed (servlets api, rack api, etc.). Perhaps there's some value in looking at how your favorite framework stacks up against its raw platform and trying to contribute some optimizations to close the gap a bit.

I'm curious about that - because there's so little to webgo I suspect the answer is something really trivial. I haven't really looked at it before, but the framework itself is just 500 lines or so unless I'm looking at the wrong one...

Given that the json marshalling and server components would be exactly the same between go and webgo, I'm curious as to whether changing the url recognised to be just /json in the goweb tests would make any difference, any reason it was different?

Webgo... I'll stick with "net/http" and Gorilla thanks.

Also, They used Go 1.0.3... I hope they update to 1.1 next month. Most everyone using Go for intensive production uses is using Go tip (which is the branch due to become 1.1 RC next month)

I'm not sure many people would use webgo in real life. I don't know... maybe some people... certainly not pros.

Also, the 1.0.3 thing is probably dragging on the numbers a bit. 1.1 would boost it a little. Not enough to get it into the top tier... but a little.

Also, for Vert.x, they seem to be only running one verticle. Which would never happen in real life.

Play could be optimized a bit... but not much. What they have is, to my mind, a fair ranking for it.

Small issues with a few of the others but nothing major. I think Go and Vert.x are the ones that would get the biggest jumps if experts looked at them. And let's be frank... does Vert.x really need a jump?

So what they have here is pretty accurate... I mean... just based on looking through the code. But Go might fare better if it used tip. And Vert.x would DEFINITELY fair better with proper worker-nonworker verticles running.