Benchmarks

Benchmarking Your App

Use autocannon to load-test your KickJS application:

# Install autocannon
pnpm add -D autocannon

# Start your app
kick dev

# In another terminal — 100 concurrent connections for 30 seconds
npx autocannon http://localhost:3000/api/v1/users -c 100 -d 30

# Quick test — 50 connections, 10 seconds
npx autocannon http://localhost:3000/api/v1/users -c 50 -d 10

Metrics to Watch

Metric	What it tells you
Req/s	Throughput — requests handled per second
p50	Median latency — half of requests are faster than this
p97.5	Tail latency — 97.5% of requests are faster
p99	Worst-case latency — only 1% are slower
Errors	Failed requests under load

Tips for Accurate Results

• Run with NODE_ENV=production — Express disables debugging features
• Close other applications to reduce CPU contention
• Run multiple times and compare median results
• Use a consistent machine for tracking regressions
• Don't compare across different hardware

Framework Reference Numbers

The KickJS monorepo includes a benchmark suite that measures framework overhead. These numbers are from the repo's internal tests, not something you run in your app.

Results vary by machine. Reference from a typical dev machine (Node 24, Linux):

Endpoint	Req/s	p50	p97.5	p99
Minimal (text)	~13,000	35ms	50ms	59ms
JSON object	~12,700	38ms	50ms	57ms
JSON array (50 items)	~8,600	56ms	80ms	88ms
Middleware stack (3 layers)	~12,600	38ms	51ms	58ms
POST + body parse	~9,200	53ms	64ms	76ms

Key takeaways:

• Middleware overhead is minimal (~5% for 3 layers)
• JSON serialization is the main cost for large responses
• KickJS's decorator/DI layer adds negligible overhead over raw Express 5