Comparison: bunostrdb vs nak vs deed

Cross-tool benchmark across ~20 fields: binary size, startup, one-shot commands, streaming throughput, store ingest, query shapes, and memory — nak (Go) and deed (Zig) against bunostrdb (in-process library).

Harness: benches/spark/ (spark.sh drives the CLI tools, spark-bun.ts the library leg). Reproduce with bash benches/spark/spark.sh (or just bench_spark).

Conditions (2026-09-27)

• bunostrdb at ece9b25, native libnostrdb.so built from the pinned submodule (C 9c55578 family).
• nak: release build from master 91e362b (nak version v0.19.3-248-g91e362b, 33M, Sep 2026).
• deed 0.3.1, built ReleaseSafe + stripped with pinned Zig 0.16.0.
• Corpus: 10,000 deterministic signed events from benches/gen-dataset.ts (7,500×kind-1 + 2,500×kind-30023), shared by all three legs.
• Machine: 12 cores, load average 10–13 during the runs (emulator, Vite, build jobs). Absolute numbers are load-contaminated — read ranges and ordering, not single values. Legs ran sequentially; min–max over 2–4 reps per leg (startup/one-shot best-of-30/50, bunostrdb queries best-of-5, deed --local best-of-30).

A. Size / startup / memory

Field	bunostrdb	deed	nak
Binary	libnostrdb.so 4.0M + shim 16K (needs Bun runtime)	2.5M stripped	33M release
version best (median) of 30	bun --version 1.22ms (1.50ms); CLI --help spawn ~450ms	0.96ms (1.44ms), ~0.3ms own share over /bin/true 0.62ms	124ms (133ms)
Peak child RSS, 10k sign/verify (Linux RUSAGE_CHILDREN)	—	12 / 15M	~110 / 111M (--version alone 69M)

B. One-shot commands (best of 50)

Field	deed	nak
key generate	0.73ms	131ms (startup floor)
decode npub	0.73ms	131ms
sign 1 event	0.86ms	136ms
verify 1 event	1.57ms	142ms

Every nak one-shot sits on its ~125ms startup floor; the per-op cost only shows in the streaming leg. bunostrdb signs in-process: 0.26–1.25ms per event across reps (800–3,900/s, load-dependent).

C. Streaming throughput (10k records via stdin)

Field	bunostrdb	deed	nak
sign	1.7–5.8k/s (NoteBuilder FFI loop)	12–18k/s	5.9–6.0k/s
verify	— (verify happens at ingest; see D)	15–22k/s	4.7–5.6k/s
decode npub	—	~570k/s	~60k/s

D. Store ingest (10k events)

Field	bunostrdb	deed	nak
submit / queue	27–88ms batch (processEvents, 113–375k/s)	—	n/a — no persistent local store (its LMDB backend holds outbox hints/spell cache only)
commit-visible	0.22–3.2s (3–45k/s); verify-ON run 2.9s, same band	8.0–8.1s (~1.2k/s) via loopback relay.py, each signature checked	closest analogue: serve + req round-trip (see E)
store file	LMDB 17–21M	16M	—

Verification cost lands on the ingester threads and overlaps the commit band: skipVerify: true and verify-ON commits fall in the same range on this box.

E. Queries

Field	bunostrdb (in-process, best of 5)	deed --local (whole command incl. ~0.9ms startup, best of 30)	nak (loopback serve round-trip)
by id	0.4–6ms typical (one 110ms outlier under load)	0.89ms	0.30s
author + kind-1, limit 50	0.01–0.03ms	0.86ms	—
kind-1, limit 500	0.10–0.17ms	2.49ms	1.46s
kind-1 all (7.5k), ids	1.7–4.8ms	21ms full JSON	—
kind-1 full JSON	19–34ms	—	—
kind-1 count	3.8–12.5ms	—	—
tag t= (empty index; corpus has no tags)	0.02–0.05ms	not measured	—
text search benchword (128 cap)	0.36–1.8ms	n/a (no API)	n/a
profile lookup (empty)	0.12–0.14ms	0.85ms	—

Takeaways

• nak's cost is process startup: ~125ms per invocation from the release build. Streaming rates (6k sign / 5k verify / 60k decode per s) are its honest per-op numbers.
• deed owns one-shot and streaming: sub-ms commands, 15–22k verify/s, ~570k decode/s, in a 2.5M binary. Its --local store reads stay tiny whole-command (0.9ms point, 2.5ms/500, 21ms/7.5k).
• bunostrdb owns in-process queries: 0.01–0.2ms point/author/ capped lookups, 2–5ms id-scan of 7.5k, plus the only text search (~0.5ms). Batch submit is 27–88ms for 10k; the commit band overlaps signature verification either way. Per-event FFI signing is its slowest CPU op next to deed.

Reproduce

bash benches/spark/spark.sh   # or: just bench_spark
# Smaller corpus / custom work dir (binaries via env):
N=2000 NAK_BIN=/path/to/nak DEED_BIN=/path/to/deed DEED_RELAY_PY=/path/to/relay.py SPARK_WORK=/tmp/spark bash benches/spark/spark.sh
# Library leg only:
bun benches/spark/spark-bun.ts <events.jsonl> [--verify-on]

Pin notes: deed must be built with its pinned Zig; relay.py ignores the request filter, so the store leg asks for every kind the corpus holds; nak serve needs a few seconds to load the corpus before it listens.