hyperfine

Hyperfine is a command-line benchmarking tool designed to accurately measure and compare the performance of shell commands and programs. It provides statistical analysis across multiple runs, automatically determining the optimal number of benchmarks to perform while measuring for at least 3 seconds by default. The tool offers constant feedback about benchmark progress and current estimates, making it easy to track long-running performance tests.

Key features include support for warmup runs to handle cache effects, parameterized benchmarks for testing with varying inputs, and statistical outlier detection to identify interference from other programs. Hyperfine can export results to multiple formats including CSV, JSON, Markdown, and AsciiDoc, making it easy to integrate into documentation or further analysis workflows. It also includes shell spawning time correction to provide accurate measurements even for very fast commands.

This tool is particularly valuable for developers, system administrators, and performance engineers who need to compare different implementations, optimize code performance, or validate that changes don't introduce performance regressions. Its cross-platform support and comprehensive feature set make it suitable for both quick ad-hoc benchmarks and systematic performance testing in CI/CD pipelines.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install hyperfine

# via APT
apt install hyperfine

# via Cargo
cargo install --locked hyperfine