goTemplateBenchmark

comparing the performance of different template engines

full featured template engines

• Ace
• Amber
• Go
• Handlebars
• Mustache
• Pongo2
• Soy
• Jet

precompilation to Go code

• ego
• ftmpl
• Goh
• Gorazor
• Quicktemplate
• Hero
• Jade
• templ
• gomponents
• hb

baseline benchmarks for comparison

• DirectBuffer - Use go to write the HTML by hand to the buffer with basic escaping

transpiling to Go Template

• Damsel I won't benchmark transpiling engines, because transpilation should just happen once at startup. If you cache the transpilation result, which is recommended, you would have the same performance numbers as html/template for rendering.

Why?

Just for fun. Go Templates work nice out of the box and should be used for rendering from a security point of view. If you care about performance you should cache the rendered output.

Sometimes there are templates that cannot be reasonably cached. Then you might need a really fast template engine with code generation.

How to run the benchmarks

./bench.sh -c go

Results dev machine

local desktop: ryzen 3900x

simple benchmarks

full featured template engines

Name	Runs	µs/op	B/op	allocations/op
Ace	501,468	6.896	1,073	32
Amber	829,180	4.371	753	28
Golang	829,586	4.226	673	27
GolangText	2,524,951	1.428	224	7
Handlebars	491,289	7.281	3,407	73
JetHTML	4,463,096	0.786	0	0
Mustache	1,595,821	2.244	1,611	24
Pongo2	1,000,000	3.159	2,059	30
Soy	1,839,766	1.968	1,224	19

precompilation to Go code

Name	Runs	µs/op	B/op	allocations/op
Ego	6,319,710	0.565	85	8
Ftmpl	3,803,455	0.929	774	12
Goh	41,145,136	0.084	0	0
Gomponents	2,234,062	1.607	776	25
Gorazor	7,170,680	0.501	512	5
HB	1,387,557	2.599	2,064	44
Hero	31,017,628	0.125	0	0
Jade	25,551,121	0.140	0	0
Quicktemplate	19,508,510	0.181	0	0
Templ	4,734,141	0.760	182	10

more complex test with template inheritance (if possible)

full featured template engines

Name	Runs	µs/op	B/op	allocations/op
ComplexGolang	99,990	36.024	5,474	209
ComplexGolangText	214,260	16.702	2,396	78
ComplexJetHTML	462,312	7.612	535	5
ComplexMustache	248,392	14.313	6,730	112

precompilation to Go code

Name	Runs	µs/op	B/op	allocations/op
ComplexEgo	1,275,114	2.815	569	31
ComplexFtmpl	856,627	4.137	3,535	38
ComplexGoDirectBuffer	5,595,393	0.656	0	0
ComplexGoh	6,029,959	0.593	0	0
ComplexGorazor	1,000,000	3.283	3,688	24
ComplexHero	3,601,705	1.003	0	0
ComplexJade	3,236,332	1.060	0	0
ComplexQuicktemplate	3,428,479	1.033	0	0
ComplexTempl	1,000,000	3.168	762	38

Security

All packages assume that template authors are trusted. If you allow custom templates you have to sanitize your user input e.g. bluemonday. Generally speaking I would suggest to sanitize every input not just HTML-input.

Attention: This part is not updated since 2016.

Framework	Security	Comment
Ace	No
amber	No
ego	Partial (html.EscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
egon	Partial (html.EscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
egonslinso	Partial (html.EscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
ftmpl	Partial (html.EscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
Go	Yes	contextual escaping html/template Security Model
Gorazor	Partial (template.HTMLEscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
Handlebars	Partial (raymond.escape)	only HTML
Hero	Partial (html.EscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
Jade	Partial (html.EscapeString)	Autoescape for HTML, others need to be called manually
Jet	Partial (html.EscapeString)	Autoescape for HTML, others need to be called manually
Kasia	Partial (kasia.WriteEscapedHtml)	only HTML
Mustache	Partial (template.HTMLEscape)	only HTML
Pongo2	Partial (pongo2.filterEscape, pongo2.filterEscapejs)	autoescape only escapes HTML, others could be implemented as pongo filters
Quicktemplate	Partial (html.EscapeString)	only HTML, others need to be called manually
Soy	Partial (template.HTMLEscapeString, url.QueryEscape, template.JSEscapeString)	autoescape only escapes HTML, contextual escaping is defined as a project goal