Perl versus Node js fastest programs Always look at the source code. These are only the fastest programs. Do some of them use manually vectorized SIMD? Look at the other programs. They may seem more-like a fair comparison to you. pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 1.90 8,268 261 2.16 100% 2% 3% 9% Node js 1.29 37,068 599 1.36 1% 100% 2% 2% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 10.10 157,208 820 31.98 96% 67% 93% 61% Node js 4.64 1,163,148 668 5.83 3% 14% 30% 79% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 37.72 1,255,884 652 131.45 88% 89% 87% 85% Node js 15.68 397,548 1812 44.40 82% 95% 44% 62% reverse-complement source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 6.36 1,495,132 287 6.52 0% 0% 2% 100% Node js 2.17 1,535,512 1480 4.64 62% 53% 56% 42% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 53.02 1,048,568 797 195.75 91% 88% 100% 90% Node js 7.52 1,343,968 744 22.37 73% 70% 85% 69% spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 24.69 12,188 555 96.59 97% 99% 98% 97% Node js 1.64 67,584 999 6.12 92% 92% 93% 95% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 58.08 55,188 871 59.16 1% 100% 1% 0% Node js 1.89 71,820 2047 6.13 79% 79% 81% 85% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 392.54 12,116 570 1,568.84 100% 100% 100% 100% Node js 11.60 64,024 1313 45.89 99% 99% 99% 99% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 419.75 6,388 1429 429.50 1% 1% 1% 100% Node js 8.63 36,136 1268 8.67 0% 0% 100% 0% mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 542.82 45,036 586 2,169.30 100% 100% 100% 100% Node js 4.03 95,448 1122 15.91 99% 98% 99% 100% Perl This is perl 5, version 32, subversion 0 (v5.32.0) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi Node js v16.3.0 all Perl programs & measurements all Node js programs & measurements