sharkdp/hyperfine
{ "createdAt": "2018-01-13T15:49:54Z", "defaultBranch": "master", "description": "A command-line benchmarking tool", "fullName": "sharkdp/hyperfine", "homepage": "", "language": "Rust", "name": "hyperfine", "pushedAt": "2025-11-21T11:07:23Z", "stargazersCount": 26823, "topics": [ "benchmark", "cli", "command-line", "rust", "terminal", "tool" ], "updatedAt": "2025-11-26T01:18:57Z", "url": "https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine"}hyperfine
Section titled “hyperfine”A command-line benchmarking tool.
Demo: Benchmarking fd and
find:

Sponsors
Section titled “Sponsors”A special thank you goes to our biggest sponsors:
Warp, the intelligent terminal
Available on MacOS, Linux, Windows
Tuple, the premier screen sharing app for developers
Available for MacOS & Windows
Features
Section titled “Features”- Statistical analysis across multiple runs.
- Support for arbitrary shell commands.
- Constant feedback about the benchmark progress and current estimates.
- Warmup runs can be executed before the actual benchmark.
- Cache-clearing commands can be set up before each timing run.
- Statistical outlier detection to detect interference from other programs and caching effects.
- Export results to various formats: CSV, JSON, Markdown, AsciiDoc.
- Parameterized benchmarks (e.g. vary the number of threads).
- Cross-platform
Basic benchmarks
Section titled “Basic benchmarks”To run a benchmark, you can simply call hyperfine <command>.... The argument(s) can be any
shell command. For example:
hyperfine 'sleep 0.3'Hyperfine will automatically determine the number of runs to perform for each command. By default,
it will perform at least 10 benchmarking runs and measure for at least 3 seconds. To change this,
you can use the -r/--runs option:
hyperfine --runs 5 'sleep 0.3'If you want to compare the runtimes of different programs, you can pass multiple commands:
hyperfine 'hexdump file' 'xxd file'Warmup runs and preparation commands
Section titled “Warmup runs and preparation commands”For programs that perform a lot of disk I/O, the benchmarking results can be heavily influenced by disk caches and whether they are cold or warm.
If you want to run the benchmark on a warm cache, you can use the -w/--warmup option to
perform a certain number of program executions before the actual benchmark:
hyperfine --warmup 3 'grep -R TODO *'Conversely, if you want to run the benchmark for a cold cache, you can use the -p/--prepare
option to run a special command before each timing run. For example, to clear harddisk caches
on Linux, you can run
sync; echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_cachesTo use this specific command with hyperfine, call sudo -v to temporarily gain sudo permissions
and then call:
hyperfine --prepare 'sync; echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' 'grep -R TODO *'Parameterized benchmarks
Section titled “Parameterized benchmarks”If you want to run a series of benchmarks where a single parameter is varied (say, the number of
threads), you can use the -P/--parameter-scan option and call:
hyperfine --prepare 'make clean' --parameter-scan num_threads 1 12 'make -j {num_threads}'This also works with decimal numbers. The -D/--parameter-step-size option can be used
to control the step size:
hyperfine --parameter-scan delay 0.3 0.7 -D 0.2 'sleep {delay}'This runs sleep 0.3, sleep 0.5 and sleep 0.7.
For non-numeric parameters, you can also supply a list of values with the -L/--parameter-list
option:
hyperfine -L compiler gcc,clang '{compiler} -O2 main.cpp'Intermediate shell
Section titled “Intermediate shell”By default, commands are executed using a predefined shell (/bin/sh on Unix, cmd.exe on Windows).
If you want to use a different shell, you can use the -S, --shell <SHELL> option:
hyperfine --shell zsh 'for i in {1..10000}; do echo test; done'Note that hyperfine always corrects for the shell spawning time. To do this, it performs a calibration procedure where it runs the shell with an empty command (multiple times), to measure the startup time of the shell. It will then subtract this time from the total to show the actual time used by the command in question.
If you want to run a benchmark without an intermediate shell, you can use the -N or --shell=none
option. This is helpful for very fast commands (< 5 ms) where the shell startup overhead correction would
produce a significant amount of noise. Note that you cannot use shell syntax like * or ~ in this case.
hyperfine -N 'grep TODO /home/user'Shell functions and aliases
Section titled “Shell functions and aliases”If you are using bash, you can export shell functions to directly benchmark them with hyperfine:
my_function() { sleep 1; }export -f my_functionhyperfine --shell=bash my_functionOtherwise, inline them into or source them from the benchmarked program:
hyperfine 'my_function() { sleep 1; }; my_function'
echo 'alias my_alias="sleep 1"' > /tmp/my_alias.shhyperfine '. /tmp/my_alias.sh; my_alias'Exporting results
Section titled “Exporting results”Hyperfine has multiple options for exporting benchmark results to CSV, JSON, Markdown and other
formats (see --help text for details).
Markdown
Section titled “Markdown”You can use the --export-markdown <file> option to create tables like the following:
| Command | Mean [s] | Min [s] | Max [s] | Relative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
find . -iregex '.*[0-9]\.jpg$' | 2.275 ± 0.046 | 2.243 | 2.397 | 9.79 ± 0.22 |
find . -iname '*[0-9].jpg' | 1.427 ± 0.026 | 1.405 | 1.468 | 6.14 ± 0.13 |
fd -HI '.*[0-9]\.jpg$' | 0.232 ± 0.002 | 0.230 | 0.236 | 1.00 |
The JSON output is useful if you want to analyze the benchmark results in more detail. The
scripts/ folder includes a lot
of helpful Python programs to further analyze benchmark results and create helpful
visualizations, like a histogram of runtimes or a whisker plot to compare
multiple benchmarks:
| ![]!(doc/histogram.png) | ![]!(doc/whisker.png) |
|---|
Detailed benchmark flowchart
Section titled “Detailed benchmark flowchart”The following chart explains the execution order of various timing runs when using options
like --warmup, --prepare <cmd>, --setup <cmd> or --cleanup <cmd>:
![]!(doc/execution-order.png)
Installation
Section titled “Installation”On Ubuntu
Section titled “On Ubuntu”On Ubuntu, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
apt install hyperfineAlternatively, for the latest version, you can download the appropriate .deb package from the Release page and install it via dpkg:
wget https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine/releases/download/v1.20.0/hyperfine_1.20.0_amd64.debsudo dpkg -i hyperfine_1.20.0_amd64.debOn Fedora
Section titled “On Fedora”On Fedora, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
dnf install hyperfineOn Alpine Linux
Section titled “On Alpine Linux”On Alpine Linux, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
apk add hyperfineOn Arch Linux
Section titled “On Arch Linux”On Arch Linux, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
pacman -S hyperfineOn Debian Linux
Section titled “On Debian Linux”On Debian Linux, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
apt install hyperfineOn Exherbo Linux
Section titled “On Exherbo Linux”On Exherbo Linux, hyperfine can be installed from the rust repositories:
cave resolve -x repository/rustcave resolve -x hyperfineOn Funtoo Linux
Section titled “On Funtoo Linux”On Funtoo Linux, hyperfine can be installed from core-kit:
emerge app-benchmarks/hyperfineOn NixOS
Section titled “On NixOS”On NixOS, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
nix-env -i hyperfineOn Flox
Section titled “On Flox”On Flox, hyperfine can be installed as follows.
flox install hyperfineHyperfine’s version in Flox follows that of Nix.
On openSUSE
Section titled “On openSUSE”On openSUSE, hyperfine can be installed from the official repositories:
zypper install hyperfineOn Void Linux
Section titled “On Void Linux”Hyperfine can be installed via xbps
xbps-install -S hyperfineOn macOS
Section titled “On macOS”Hyperfine can be installed via Homebrew:
brew install hyperfineOr you can install using MacPorts:
sudo port selfupdatesudo port install hyperfineOn FreeBSD
Section titled “On FreeBSD”Hyperfine can be installed via pkg:
pkg install hyperfineOn OpenBSD
Section titled “On OpenBSD”doas pkg_add hyperfineOn Windows
Section titled “On Windows”Hyperfine can be installed via Chocolatey, Scoop, or Winget:
choco install hyperfinescoop install hyperfinewinget install hyperfineWith conda
Section titled “With conda”Hyperfine can be installed via conda from the conda-forge channel:
conda install -c conda-forge hyperfineWith cargo (Linux, macOS, Windows)
Section titled “With cargo (Linux, macOS, Windows)”Hyperfine can be installed from source via cargo:
cargo install --locked hyperfineMake sure that you use Rust 1.76 or newer.
From binaries (Linux, macOS, Windows)
Section titled “From binaries (Linux, macOS, Windows)”Download the corresponding archive from the Release page.
Alternative tools
Section titled “Alternative tools”Hyperfine is inspired by bench.
Integration with other tools
Section titled “Integration with other tools”Chronologer is a tool that uses hyperfine to
visualize changes in benchmark timings across your Git history.
Bencher is a continuous benchmarking tool that supports hyperfine to
track benchmarks and catch performance regressions in CI.
Drop hyperfine JSON outputs onto the Venz chart to visualize the results, and manage hyperfine configurations.
Make sure to check out the scripts folder
in this repository for a set of tools to work with hyperfine benchmark results.
Origin of the name
Section titled “Origin of the name”The name hyperfine was chosen in reference to the hyperfine levels of caesium 133 which play a crucial role in the definition of our base unit of time — the second.
Citing hyperfine
Section titled “Citing hyperfine”Thank you for considering to cite hyperfine in your research work. Please see the information in the sidebar on how to properly cite hyperfine.
License
Section titled “License”hyperfine is dual-licensed under the terms of the MIT License and the Apache License 2.0.
See the [LICENSE-APACHE]!(LICENSE-APACHE) and [LICENSE-MIT]!(LICENSE-MIT) files for details.