Benchmark: Date.parse vs new Date

Tests:

new Date
new Date('01/01/2001');
Date.parse
Date.parse('01/01/2001');

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 97 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 78 runs

Date.parse

5.1M/s

new Date

4.7M/s

View exact numbers

✓ Date.parse: 5,118,191 ops/sec
• new Date: 4,701,710 ops/sec

Firefox 19 runs

Date.parse

11.3M/s

new Date

8.6M/s

Fastest: Date.parse (1.3x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ Date.parse: 11,346,299 ops/sec
• new Date: 8,601,032 ops/sec

Results show median performance across all community submissions. Run this benchmark yourself to verify on your device.

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
new Date
Date.parse

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:139.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/139.0

Browser/OS: Firefox 139 on Linux

View result in a separate tab

Date.parse

13.7M/s

new Date

10.3M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ Date.parse	13,703,917 Ops/sec
new Date	10,335,996 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down what's being tested in this JavaScript microbenchmark.

**What is being compared?**

The benchmark compares two approaches to work with dates:

1. `new Date('01/01/2001')`
2. `Date.parse('01/01/2001')`

**Options and their pros and cons:**

1. **`new Date('01/01/2001')`**
	* This approach creates a new date object using the constructor.
	* Pros:
		+ More flexible, as it allows for specifying the timestamp in milliseconds or ISO 8601 format.
		+ Can be used to create dates with custom time zones.
	* Cons:
		+ May not perform well for simple cases where only year and month are provided (like in this benchmark).
2. **`Date.parse('01/01/2001')`**
	* This approach parses a string into a date object using the `parse()` method.
	* Pros:
		+ More concise, as it's often more readable to write `Date.parse('yyyy-mm-dd')`.
	* Cons:
		+ May not work correctly for all formats (e.g., with commas or slashes) and can be more error-prone.

**Library usage:**

There is no explicit library mentioned in the benchmark definition. However, it's worth noting that `new Date()` is a built-in JavaScript function.

**Special JS features or syntax:**

None of the test cases use any special JavaScript features or syntax beyond standard JavaScript (ECMAScript).

**Other alternatives:**

In theory, other approaches to working with dates could be compared in this benchmark, such as:

* Using `Date.now()` for performance comparison
* Implementing a custom date parsing function using regular expressions
* Comparing different time zones

However, the provided benchmark focuses on comparing these two basic approaches to creating and parsing dates.

In the context of modern web development, using `new Date('01/01/2001')` is generally recommended for more flexibility and accuracy. If you only need to work with a specific date format (e.g., ISO 8601), `Date.parse()` can be a concise alternative.

Date.parse vs new Date (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `new Date vs Date.parse`

Created: 9 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

new Date

Date.parse

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 97 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 78 runs

Firefox 19 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

Date.parse vs new Date (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: new Date vs Date.parse

Created: 9 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

new Date

Date.parse

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 97 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 78 runs

Firefox 19 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `new Date vs Date.parse`