Benchmark: Date.now(); vs new Date()

Tests:

Date.now();
Date.now();
new Date()
new Date()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 10 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 10 runs

Date.now();

30.9M/s

new Date()

21.1M/s

Fastest: Date.now(); (1.5x faster)

View exact numbers

✓ Date.now();: 30,947,972 ops/sec
• new Date(): 21,144,604 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
Date.now();
new Date()

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: 20 days ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 26_5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) EdgiOS/150.0.4078.65 Version/26.0 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

Browser/OS: Mobile Safari 26 on iOS 26.5.0

View result in a separate tab

Date.now();

34.9M/s

new Date()

28.7M/s

View exact numbers

Test name	Executions per second
✓ Date.now();	34,910,648 Ops/sec
new Date()	28,744,326 Ops/sec

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

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down the provided benchmark and explain what's being tested, the options compared, pros and cons of those approaches, and other considerations.

**Benchmark Definition**

The benchmark is defined by two test cases:

1. `Date.now();`
2. `new Date()`

These are two ways to get the current timestamp in JavaScript.

**Options Compared**

In this benchmark, we're comparing two options for getting the current timestamp:

1. **`Date.now()`**: This method returns the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch (January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC) as a 64-bit integer.
2. **`new Date()`**: This method creates a new `Date` object and returns its timestamp in milliseconds.

**Pros and Cons**

* **`Date.now()`**:
	+ Pros:
		- Faster execution time, since it's a built-in method that doesn't create an intermediate object.
		- More efficient for large-scale applications or those with performance-critical code.
	+ Cons:
		- May not be suitable for all use cases, such as when you need to work with dates in a specific format (e.g., ISO 8601).
* **`new Date()`**:
	+ Pros:
		- More flexible and human-readable date formatting options available.
		- Can be useful when working with dates in a specific format or for UI-related tasks.
	+ Cons:
		- Slower execution time due to the creation of an intermediate object.
		- May not be suitable for applications where performance is critical.

**Other Considerations**

* **Browser differences**: The benchmark results show significant variations between browsers, with Chrome 74 performing better than expected. This highlights the importance of testing on different browsers and platforms to ensure accurate results.
* **Performance impact**: Both methods have a low overhead in terms of CPU cycles, but `new Date()` might incur additional costs due to the creation of an intermediate object.

**Library or Framework**

There is no explicit library or framework mentioned in the benchmark definition. However, it's worth noting that some libraries (e.g., Moment.js) provide more sophisticated date manipulation capabilities, which may affect performance.

**Special JavaScript Features or Syntax**

The test case doesn't use any special JavaScript features or syntax beyond what's required to define the benchmark.

Date.now(); vs new Date() (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: `Date.now(); vs new Date()`

Created: 7 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Date.now();

new Date()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 10 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 10 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.now(); vs new Date() (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: Date.now(); vs new Date()

Created: 7 years ago by: Guest

Go to the latest result

Date.now();

new Date()

Historical Performance Data aggregated from 10 community runs

Desktop Results:

Chrome 10 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: `Date.now(); vs new Date()`