7 Month Update

It's been 7 months since the initial release of Schema Benchmarks! We now have a wide range of benchmarks (12 different types), and measure the vast majority of notable schema validation libraries (currently 24). Schema Benchmarks has helped library authors identify performance regressions, and provides a useful resource for developers to compare libraries.

Updates to Schema Benchmarks

1. celebration

   2026-02-19

   Initial Release

   Schema Benchmarks was released to the public, with initial benchmarks:

   • Download
   • Initialization
   • Validation
   • Parsing
2. speed

   2026-02-22

   Standard Schema

   Measuring the runtime performance of libraries that implement the Standard Schema interface, which allows many other libraries to accept them without needing to specialise for each library.

   content_copy
   Copy to clipboardCopy to clipboard
   import { personSchema } from "./schemas";
   
   const person = await upfetch(url, { schema: personSchema });
   
   // internally
   
   const result = await personSchema["~standard"].validate(data);
   

3. speed

   2026-02-24

   String formats

   Measuring the runtime performance of libraries that validate specific string formats, such as email addresses, URLs, and UUIDs.

   content_copy
   Copy to clipboardCopy to clipboard
   import * as v from "valibot";
   
   const emailSchema = v.pipe(v.string(), v.email());
   
   

4. speed

   2026-03-02

   Stack traces

   Inspired by a tweet from @trav, these benchmarks capture the error stack traces produced by libraries when validation fails, and measure how many frames it takes to find the current caller.

   This provides a useful comparison of the error messages produced by libraries, and how easy it is to trace back to the source of the error.

5. speed

   2026-03-05

   Codecs

   Measuring the runtime performance of "codecs", two-way schemas that support both encoding and decoding of data.

   content_copy
   Copy to clipboardCopy to clipboard
   import * as z from "zod";
   
   const bigIntFromString = z.codec(z.string(), z.bigint(), {
     encode: (bigInt) => bigInt.toString(),
     decode: (str) => BigInt(str),
   });
   
   bigIntFromString.encode(123n); // "123"
   bigIntFromString.decode("123"); // 123n
   

6. speed

   2026-02 – 2026-07

   Upkeep

   We continue to maintain and improve Schema Benchmarks, adding new libraries and updating existing ones.

   New libraries added include:

   • superstruct
   • runtypes
   • ata-validator
   • @sapphire/shapeshift
   • paseri

   For a full list of libraries, see the Libraries page.

7. speed

   2026-08-15

   JSON Schema

   Based on suggestions from @sinclairzx81 (creator of TypeBox) and @DZakh (creator of Sury), we added multiple benchmarks for libraries that support JSON Schema, including:

   • Schema to JSON - Runtime performance of converting libraries' schemas to JSON Schema.
   • JSON to Schema - Runtime performance of converting JSON Schema to libraries' schemas.
   • Compliance - Compliance of libraries' schemas with the JSON Schema Test Suite
8. speed

   2026-09-20

   TypeScript

   Contributed by @DZakh, this benchmark measures the type inference performance and editor experience of TypeScript schema libraries, including compiler instantiations, inferred types, and hover display.

Ecosystem Impact

1. deployed_code

   2026-02-20

   TypeBox

   On initial release of our benchmarks, TypeBox was consistently underperforming in runtime performance.

   After discussion with sinclairzx81 (author of TypeBox), it emerged that the v1.x release had introduced a change in behaviour, specifically that schemas would try to coerce invalid values into valid ones. Understandably, this made the library slower than most other libraries that don't do this.

   A v1.1.0 release made this behaviour opt-in, bringing TypeBox's performance back in line with other libraries.

   content_copy
   Copy to clipboardCopy to clipboard
   // v1.0.x
   // A = 12345
   const A = Value.Parse(Type.Number(), "12345");
   
   // v1.1.x
   // throw! - Expected Number
   const A = Value.Parse(Type.Number(), "12345");
   

2. deployed_code

   2026-03-05

   Decoders

   Based on our download benchmarking, we were able to identify a tree shaking issue with decoders, and collaborated with the author to get it fixed.

   Despite already having "sideEffects": false, we found that manually annotating functions with #__NO_SIDE_EFFECTS__ and function calls with #__PURE__ allowed bundlers to tree shake the library more effectively, reducing the overall bundle size for users.

   content_copy
   Copy to clipboardCopy to clipboard
   // #__NO_SIDE_EFFECTS__
   function exampleFunction() {
     // function implementation
   }
   
   const result = /* #__PURE__ */ anotherFunction();
   

3. deployed_code

   2026-07-08

   Valibot

   Using our initialization benchmarking, the valibot team were able to identify a performance regression in their v1.x release.

   This has been fixed as of v1.5.0, resulting in a significant speed up of schema initialisation.

New Benchmark Ideas

If you have any suggestions for new benchmarks, or would like to see a library added, we'd love to hear from you! Please open an issue on GitHub.

Some current ones that have been suggested include:

• Memory usage
• Schema compilation (JIT)

If you think you could contribute to any of these, or offer opinions, please do! Be aware of our contributing guidelines.