Node vs Bun: no backend performance difference

In this article I’ll be comparing the performance of Bun vs Node. In particular (as Bun is many things), I will focus on their performance as the runtime for your server-side JavaScript code. With Node being the default choice for many, Bun has to prove it is worthy of your attention. It makes strong claims: There’s a benchmark right on the homepage, claiming almost 5 times more requests per second than Node! 1. In the documentation, they claim that “In most cases, the startup and running performance is faster than V8, the engine used by Node.js and Chromium-based browsers.” Part of what makes this an interesting comparison is that Node uses the V8 engine (which also powers Chromium-based browsers), while Bun uses JavascriptCore (which powers Safari).