Benchmark 2025: Java vs Go, Rust and Python — who is leading?

Benchmark 2025: Java vs Competitors — Who Took the Lead?

In early 2025, the developer community once again turned its attention to the classic programming language showdown. A new large-scale benchmark, conducted by the independent lab TechPerf, compared the performance of Java (OpenJDK 21 and GraalVM 23), Go 1.22, Rust 1.77, and Python 3.13. The results were unexpected even for experienced engineers.

The testing was performed on a standard set of tasks: calculating Pi, processing JSON arrays of 1 million records, multithreaded HTTP requests, and working with binary data. Execution speed (in seconds) and peak RAM consumption (in megabytes) were measured.

Key Benchmark Results

• JSON parsing: Java (GraalVM) — 2.1s / 180 MB; Rust — 1.8s / 110 MB; Go — 3.0s / 200 MB; Python — 12.4s / 350 MB.
• Multithreaded HTTP requests: Java — 4.5s / 220 MB; Go — 5.2s / 190 MB; Rust — 3.8s / 140 MB; Python — 18.0s / 400 MB.
• Calculating Pi (10 million iterations): Java — 0.9s; Rust — 0.6s; Go — 1.5s; Python — 45s.
• Working with binary data: Java — 3.2s / 200 MB; Rust — 2.1s / 90 MB; Go — 4.0s / 210 MB; Python — 20s / 380 MB.

Rust confidently took first place in speed and memory efficiency, outperforming Java by an average of 20–30%. However, Java (especially the GraalVM build) showed impressive stability and low latency under multithreaded loads, beating Go and Python by a wide margin. Go, despite its simplicity, lagged behind Java in I/O-intensive tasks, while Python traditionally brought up the rear.

Why Does Java Remain at the Top?

Despite Rust surpassing Java in raw performance, Java maintains its leadership in the enterprise environment. Reasons:

• A mature ecosystem and thousands of libraries for backend, Big Data, and microservices.
• JIT compilation and GraalVM optimizations, which allow Java to catch up with native languages in real-world projects.
• Excellent scalability: the Java Virtual Machine can efficiently manage memory under loads exceeding 1000 requests per second.

Conclusions for Developers

If you need maximum performance and memory control — choose Rust. If development speed and enterprise reliability are important — Java remains the best choice. Go is suitable for simple microservices, and Python for prototyping and ML tasks. The 2025 benchmark confirmed: Java is not giving up its position, and thanks to GraalVM, it is becoming even more competitive.

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