Evaluating Performance and Resource Consumption of REST Frameworks and Execution Environments: Insights and Guidelines for Developers and Companies

The REST (REpresentational State Transfer) paradigm has become essential for designing distributed applications that leverage the HTTP protocol, enabling efficient data exchange and the development of scalable architectures such as microservices. However, selecting an appropriate framework among the myriad available options, especially given the diversity of emerging execution environments, presents a significant challenge. Often, this decision neglects crucial factors such as performance and energy efficiency, favoring instead developer familiarity and popularity within the industry. To address this, we conducted a comprehensive benchmark study using a prototype REST API application provided by an industry partner, which was implemented multiple times using different REST API frameworks. We evaluated five different REST API frameworks across three popular programming languages, incorporating both traditional and emerging execution environments, resulting in twelve distinct configurations. Our results reveal significant differences in performance and computational resource consumption across different frameworks and execution environments, highlighting the necessity of making informed technology choices based on thorough analysis rather than convenience or familiarity. In addition to our findings, we offer other contributions to the field: an automated pipeline that benchmarks different configurations with various frameworks and execution environments, and a reference benchmark REST API that can be used in other studies. This research provides valuable insights and tools for developers and organizations aiming to select high-performance, resource-efficient technologies that promote environmental sustainability and reduce operational costs.