Benchmark: moment(string) vs moment(new Date(string)) vs new Date(string) vs dayjs(string) vs dayjs(new Date(string))

HTML Preparation code:


<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.30.1/moment.min.js'></script>
<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/dayjs/1.11.13/dayjs.min.js'></script>

Tests:

String moment date
const date = moment('1996-01-22')
Date() moment date
const date = moment(new Date('1996-01-22'))
new Date()
const date = new Date('1996-01-22')
String dayjs date
const date = dayjs('1996-01-22')
Date() dayjs date
const date = dayjs(new Date('1996-01-22'))
moment with format
const date = moment('1996-01-22','YYYY-MM-DD')
dayjs with format
const date = dayjs('1996-01-22','YYYY-MM-DD')

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
String moment date
Date() moment date
new Date()
String dayjs date
Date() dayjs date
moment with format
dayjs with format

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 27 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/134.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 134 on Windows

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
String moment date	248442.6 Ops/sec
Date() moment date	1937330.9 Ops/sec
new Date()	5206907.5 Ops/sec
String dayjs date	1666922.5 Ops/sec
Date() dayjs date	3202180.2 Ops/sec
moment with format	275661.4 Ops/sec
dayjs with format	1719157.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 27 days ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

The benchmark provided evaluates different methods of constructing dates in JavaScript using two popular libraries: **Moment.js** and **Day.js**, as well as native JavaScript date creation. The test cases focus on performance based on different input types, such as string input and Date object input, allowing for a direct comparison of execution speeds for each case.

### Options Tested:

1. **`moment('1996-01-22')`**:
   - This creates a Moment.js date from a string in the standard format.
   - **Pro**: Easy to use; supports many operations and manipulations.
   - **Con**: Moment.js is relatively large in terms of bundle size and has been deprecated in favor of smaller libraries.

2. **`moment(new Date('1996-01-22'))`**:
   - Similar to the first, but it first creates a JavaScript Date object and then passes it to Moment.js.
   - **Pro**: Allows using the native JavaScript date parsing first, which can sometimes handle edge cases better than Moment.
   - **Con**: Still incurs the overhead of calling Moment, which might affect performance.

3. **`new Date('1996-01-22')`**:
   - Using the native JavaScript Date constructor with a string.
   - **Pro**: Fast and lightweight; no external libraries are needed.
   - **Con**: Limited functionality compared to moment and dayjs (e.g., no additional formatting features).

4. **`dayjs('1996-01-22')`**:
   - Similar to Moment.js, this uses Day.js to create a date from a string.
   - **Pro**: Day.js aims to be a lightweight alternative to Moment.js, providing a similar API but with a smaller footprint.
   - **Con**: Although it's smaller, it may not have as many features or community support as Moment.js.

5. **`dayjs(new Date('1996-01-22'))`**:
   - This follows the same idea as the Moment counterpart but uses Day.js instead.
   - **Pro/Con**: Same considerations as the Moment variant, but favors the more lightweight Day.js library.

6. **`moment('1996-01-22', 'YYYY-MM-DD')`** and **`dayjs('1996-01-22', 'YYYY-MM-DD')`**:
   - Both cases explicitly specify the date format.
   - **Pro**: This can help in parsing more complex date strings correctly.
   - **Con**: Slightly adds more overhead in parsing due to format recognition, thus may be slower than default parsing.

### Observations from Benchmark Results:

- **Performance**: 
  - The native `new Date()` method performs the best, yielding a significantly higher number of executions per second (approximately 5.20 million). This demonstrates the efficiency of JavaScript's built-in features.
  - `dayjs()` with a string also performs well (~3.2 million), which is much faster than Moment.js (~1.93 million for `moment(new Date())`), showing Day.js's advantages in terms of performance compared to Moment.js when working with basic string inputs. However, `moment` still shows good performance with `new Date()`.

- **Overhead**: 
  - Using format specifiers with either library (`moment('1996-01-22','YYYY-MM-DD')` and `dayjs('1996-01-22','YYYY-MM-DD')`) introduces notable overhead, resulting in low execution counts, highlighting the cost of additional parsing logic.

### Alternatives:
Several alternatives exist to the methods tested:
1. **Luxon**: Another date library that offers better handling of timezones and Intl APIs. It is more modern than Moment.js but less lightweight than Day.js.
2. **date-fns**: This library provides a more functional approach and is tree-shakeable, making it a good choice for modern applications that want modular features without the overhead of Moment.js.
3. **Native JavaScript**: Using the built-in JavaScript Date API could often suffice for applications that do not require complex date manipulations, thus eliminating the need for any library altogether.
4. **Temporal API**: A modern proposal for handling dates and times in JavaScript. It aims to address many shortcomings of the native Date object.

### Conclusion:
When choosing between these options, consider the trade-offs between performance, functionality, and the size of the libraries if you're building a web application. For high-performance needs and lightweight applications, native date handling or Day.js is generally more favorable, while Moment.js should be approached cautiously due to its larger size and deprecated status.

Related benchmarks:

moment(string) vs moment(new Date(string)) vs new Date(string) vs dayjs(string) vs dayjs(new Date(string)) (version: 2)

Comparing performance of: String moment date vs Date() moment date vs new Date() vs String dayjs date vs Date() dayjs date vs moment with format vs dayjs with format

Created: 27 days ago by: Registered User

Jump to the latest result

String moment date

Date() moment date

new Date()

String dayjs date

Date() dayjs date

moment with format

dayjs with format

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Experimental features:

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model gpt-4o-mini, generated 27 days ago):