Sharkbench

Benchmarking programming languages and web frameworks

Quarkus: Imperative vs Reactive

Quarkus is a Kubernetes-native Java framework tailored for GraalVM and OpenJDK, crafted from best-of-breed Java libraries and standards. It offers a unified reactive and imperative programming model optimized for containers and serverless environments. Quarkus focuses on fast startup time, low memory footprint, and developer productivity.

This benchmark tests how fast a framework can perform concurrent HTTP requests, I/O operations, and JSON de/serialization.

OS: LinuxCPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 325Last Updated: 2026-10-14

Comparison

Reactive processes 3.09x requests per second compared to Imperative, a 209.11% improvement.

MedianP99

Mode	Requests per second How many requests per second can the framework handle? (higher is better)	Latency How long does it take to process a request? (lower is better)	Stability How stable is the framework under load? (median / P99 latency) (higher is better)	Memory How much memory (RAM) does the framework use? (lower is better)	Build Time Fetching dependencies + compiling, excluding SDK setup (lower is better)
Reactive	11712 (+209.11 %)	1.0 ms (-54.55 %)	1.98 % (-0.99 %)	234.2 MB (-5.26 %)	47.67 s (+9.35 %)
Imperative	3789	2.3 ms	2.97 %	247.2 MB	43.59 s

All results

MedianP99

Framework	Requests per second How many requests per second can the framework handle? (higher is better)	Latency How long does it take to process a request? (lower is better)	Stability How stable is the framework under load? (median / P99 latency) (higher is better)	Memory How much memory (RAM) does the framework use? (lower is better)	Build Time Fetching dependencies + compiling, excluding SDK setup (lower is better)
Java (OpenJDK v25) / Quarkus v3 (Reactive)	11712	1.0 ms	1.98 %	234.2 MB	47.67 s
Java (OpenJDK v25) / Quarkus v3 (Imperative)	3789	2.3 ms	2.97 %	247.2 MB	43.59 s
Java (OpenJDK v21) / Quarkus v3 (Reactive)	11211	1.1 ms	2.08 %	232.5 MB	63.23 s
Java (OpenJDK v21) / Quarkus v3 (Imperative)	3789	2.2 ms	2.95 %	249.3 MB	64.61 s
Java (OpenJDK v17) / Quarkus v3 (Reactive)	10948	1.1 ms	2.08 %	230.5 MB	64.42 s
Java (OpenJDK v17) / Quarkus v3 (Imperative)	3710	2.3 ms	3.05 %	249.5 MB	65.67 s

Popular web frameworks

How does Quarkus compare to other popular frameworks?

MedianP99

Framework	Requests per second How many requests per second can the framework handle? (higher is better)	Latency How long does it take to process a request? (lower is better)	Stability How stable is the framework under load? (median / P99 latency) (higher is better)	Memory How much memory (RAM) does the framework use? (lower is better)	Build Time Fetching dependencies + compiling, excluding SDK setup (lower is better)
Rust / Axum	26670	1.2 ms	74.13 %	16.5 MB	26.69 s
C# (.NET) / ASP.NET Core	17041	1.5 ms	23.04 %	101.8 MB	6.09 s
JavaScript (Node.js) / Express	15270	2.0 ms	29.45 %	228.4 MB	4.92 s
Java (OpenJDK) / Quarkus (Reactive)	11712	1.0 ms	1.98 %	234.2 MB	47.67 s
Java (OpenJDK) / Quarkus (Imperative)	3789	2.3 ms	2.97 %	247.2 MB	43.59 s
Java (Temurin) / Spring Boot (MVC)	2962	1.6 ms	1.86 %	286.4 MB	37.73 s
Go / Gin	1640	3.4 ms	3.65 %	23.1 MB	32.20 s
Python / FastAPI (Uvicorn)	792	32.9 ms	20.81 %	63.3 MB	8.55 s
Python / Flask (Gunicorn)	320	99.9 ms	56.36 %	110.2 MB	8.94 s
Python / Django (Gunicorn)	279	103.8 ms	57.16 %	151.9 MB	10.29 s
PHP / Laravel	92	319.0 ms	80.90 %	80.4 MB	95.22 s