Benchmark: Intl.Collator.compare vs String.prototype.localeCompare (v8 ASCII fast path)

Script Preparation code:

function randomStrings(chars, length, stringLength) {
	const randomChar = () => chars[Math.floor(Math.random() * chars.length)];
	const randomString = () => Array.from({length: stringLength}, randomChar).join("");
	return Array.from({length}, randomString);
}

var asciiStrings = randomStrings(["a", "b", "c"], 50000, 9);
var unicodeStrings = randomStrings(["간", "쟁", "뜻"], 50000, 9);

Tests:

Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)
const collator = new Intl.Collator(); asciiStrings.sort(collator.compare);
String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)
asciiStrings.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b));
Intl.Collator.compare
const collator = new Intl.Collator(); unicodeStrings.sort(collator.compare);
String.prototype.localeCompare
unicodeStrings.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b));

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 9 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 9 runs

String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)

570/s

Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)

278/s

Intl.Collator.compare

193/s

String.prototype.localeCompare

178/s

Fastest: String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings) (3.2x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings): 570 ops/sec
• Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings): 278 ops/sec
• Intl.Collator.compare: 193 ops/sec
• String.prototype.localeCompare: 178 ops/sec

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

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)
String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)
Intl.Collator.compare
String.prototype.localeCompare

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 4 months ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/147.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 147 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)

587/s

Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)

257/s

String.prototype.localeCompare

253/s

Intl.Collator.compare

193/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)	587 Ops/sec
Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)	257 Ops/sec
String.prototype.localeCompare	253 Ops/sec
Intl.Collator.compare	193 Ops/sec

Intl.Collator.compare vs String.prototype.localeCompare (v8 ASCII fast path) (version: 0) Benchmark.js

Comparing performance of: `Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings) vs String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings) vs Intl.Collator.compare vs String.prototype.localeCompare`

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)

String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)

Intl.Collator.compare

String.prototype.localeCompare

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 9 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 9 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Intl.Collator.compare vs String.prototype.localeCompare (v8 ASCII fast path) (version: 0) Benchmark.js

Comparing performance of: Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings) vs String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings) vs Intl.Collator.compare vs String.prototype.localeCompare

Created: 2 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings)

String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings)

Intl.Collator.compare

String.prototype.localeCompare

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 9 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 9 runs

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Related benchmarks

Comparing performance of: `Intl.Collator.compare (ASCII-only strings) vs String.prototype.localeCompare (ASCII-only strings) vs Intl.Collator.compare vs String.prototype.localeCompare`