Server-Side Rendering Comparison

This project measures how fast different JavaScript frameworks can convert web pages into HTML on the server side. Instead of sending a blank page to your browser and building the interface in JavaScript there, server-side rendering sends a complete, ready-to-display page from the server. This is useful for faster initial page loads and better search engine optimization. This repo tests three popular frameworks—React, Rax, and Vue—to see which one does this job quickest.

The project includes a simple benchmark that runs on your local computer. It starts a web server and measures two things: how long it takes each framework to convert a component into HTML text (renderToString), and how many requests the server can handle per second when multiple people are visiting simultaneously. The benchmark was run on a 2015 MacBook Pro with Node.js, and the results show that Vue was fastest, handling about 1,572 requests per second, while React handled 1,189 and Rax handled 1,267.

A developer or performance engineer would use this to understand which framework performs best for server-side rendering in their specific scenario. If you're building a website where the server generates the initial HTML (a common approach before client-side rendering became dominant), you'd want to know whether React, Vue, or Rax would get pages to users fastest. The benchmarks here provide real-world numbers rather than just theoretical claims.

The repo is straightforward to run—you install dependencies, start the test server, and run the benchmark suite. It uses Webpack to bundle the code and a Koa server to handle requests. The measurements exclude caching to show raw performance, meaning the results represent worst-case scenarios without optimization tricks. For teams deciding between these frameworks specifically for server rendering, this comparison gives concrete data to inform that choice.