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Nikita Galkin
Nikita Galkin

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crypto.randomUUID is three times faster uuid.v4

#node #benchmark

Node.js v14.17 release added crypto.randomUUID(). This method allows to generate random RFC 4122 Version 4 UUID strings. Example:

const { randomUUID } = require('crypto');

console.log(randomUUID());
// '43c98ac2-8493-49b0-95d8-de843d90e6ca'
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I wondered how big the difference between uuid generation by Node.js API and uuid package.

For benchmarking I prefer to use hyperfine. It is like apache benchmark, but for CLI commands. There are have two cases:

  1. require('crypto').randomUUID()
  2. require('uuid').v4()

Let's put them into two files:

// test-native.js
const { randomUUID } = require('crypto');

for (let i = 0; i < 10_000_000; i++) {
  randomUUID();
}
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// test-uuid.js
const { v4 } = require('uuid');

for (let i = 0; i < 10_000_000; i++) {
  v4();
}
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Now we ready for benchmarking:
hyperfine 'node test-native.js' 'node test-uuid.js'

This command shows that native generation is three times faster than uuid package. Awesome!

Top comments (7)

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rangoo94 profile image
Dawid Rusnak • • Edited

Actually, the randomUUID in Node v15.12+/v16 is a little more optimized, and outperforms it even more :)

Benchmark #3: node-15 native.js
  Time (mean ± σ):     564.6 ms ±   5.5 ms    [User: 556.8 ms, System: 14.1 ms]
  Range (min … max):   559.6 ms … 575.2 ms    10 runs

Summary
  'node-15 native.js' ran
    1.01 ± 0.01 times faster than 'node-16 native.js'
    3.51 ± 0.09 times faster than 'node-14 native.js'
   11.18 ± 0.13 times faster than 'node-14 uuid.js'
   12.52 ± 0.14 times faster than 'node-16 uuid.js'
   12.65 ± 0.26 times faster than 'node-15 uuid.js'
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qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo •

It seems the faster crypto.randomUUID is, the slower uuid.js runs on that version :D

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galkin profile image
Nikita Galkin •

Thank you!

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jdgamble555 profile image
Jonathan Gamble •

This package is depreciated. Use uuid instead.

npm i uuid
npm i -D @types/uuid
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import { v4 } from 'uuid';

v4();
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J

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ehaynes99 profile image
Eric Haynes • • Edited

I didn't get all fancy with hyperfine, but a cursory test shows no appreciable difference in performance with npmjs.com/package/uuid. Still, 2 less dependencies is nice. :)

uuid.v4 took 954.153 ms
randomUUID took 962.838 ms
uuid.v4 took 987.495 ms
randomUUID took 965.426 ms
uuid.v4 took 984.862 ms
randomUUID took 949.582 ms
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elrond25 profile image
Carlos Araya •

Just curious,

Is the difference any noticeable generating a single UUID or several hundred UUIDs as opposed to millions?

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vlucas profile image
Vance Lucas •

No. You likely won't notice much of a difference at all with a low number of uses in your code.

The good news is that the API is the same, so it's a simple function import swap, especially if you rename the function on import like:

import { randomUUID as v4 } from 'crypto';
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