Benchmark 2025: C++ vs Competitors — Who is Faster?

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C++ Confirms Its Title as the King of Performance: Benchmark 2025 Results

In early 2025, the analytical agency TechEmpower and the open-source enthusiast community published fresh results of a large-scale benchmark comparing the performance of popular programming languages. The focus is on C++, traditionally considered the speed standard, against dynamic competitors: Rust, Go, Java, and C#. The results were predictable, but with a number of interesting nuances.

Test Methodology

The benchmark included four key scenarios:

Floating-point calculations — modeling physical processes (N-body simulation).
Memory operations — intensive allocation/deallocation of blocks (malloc/free vs smart pointers).
Network I/O — processing HTTP requests via asynchronous frameworks.
Multithreading — parallel parsing of large JSON arrays.

All tests were conducted on identical hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, 64 GB DDR5, NVMe SSD. Compilers — GCC 14, Clang 18, rustc 1.80, Go 1.23, .NET 9.

Results: C++ vs Competitors

In each discipline, C++ (with flags -O3 -march=native) finished first or second. Details:

Calculations: C++ is 12% faster than Rust, 35% faster than C# (.NET 9 AOT). Go lagged by half due to garbage collector overhead.
Memory: Rust showed nearly identical speed (difference less than 3%), thanks to its ownership model. Java and C# lost 20-25% due to GC pauses.
Network: C++ (asio) and Rust (tokio) — on par. Go lagged by 18% due to the goroutine scheduler under high load.
Multithreading: C++ with std::jthread and atomic operations — the leader. Rust lagged by 7% due to borrow checker checks.

Why is C++ Still Unrivaled?

Experts highlight three reasons:

Zero-cost abstractions: C++ compilers (especially Clang 18) have learned to aggressively optimize template code, approaching ideal assembly.
Mature ecosystem: Libraries like Boost, Qt, and STL have been polished for years for maximum efficiency.
Hardware control: Direct access to CPU caches, SIMD instructions, and data alignment management give C++ an advantage in high-load systems.

Conclusions for Developers

If your project is a high-load service, game engine, high-frequency trading, or scientific computing, C++ remains the unrivaled choice in 2025. Rust is an excellent replacement for safe systems programming, but in raw speed it still lags behind. Go and Java are the choice for microservices where speed is not critical. C++ continues to rule where every CPU cycle matters.

Full benchmark data and test sources are available in the TechEmpower Framework Benchmarks repository.