LINQ2DB vs EF Core Benchmark under .NET Framework 4.8 and Core 3.1

Recently .NET Core 3.1 was released. It's optimized more that .NET Framework and will be its successor soon.

This is why it's interesting to compare them.

Benchmark has done with the same rules.

Hardware: i7-8750H, DDR4-2667.
Software: Win 10 x64, 64 bit, .NET 4.8, Core 3.1, linq2db 2.9.4, EFCore 3.1, ADO for .NET Framework v4.0.30319 (standard), ADO for Core 4.8.0 (nuget package).

Simple TOP 10 query

ORM: LINQ2DB is very good for simple queries, twice better than EF Core. LINQ2DB raw query can be even better than calling manually ADO (might be measurement error).

Platform: Overall performance of Core is just a little bit worse than .NET. Context initialization for Core is slower, but query compilation and mapping are faster than under .NET.

Simple TOP 500 query

ORM: For a little bit less simple queries LINQ2DB is still faster than EF Core but not much.

Platform: Context initialization for Core is slower than for .NET, but overall performance is better.

Complex TOP 10 query

ORM: LINQ2DB is slightly faster than EF Core but difference is just small.

Platform: Core is a little bit faster than .NET but nearly the same.

Complex TOP 500 query

The picture is interesting.

ORM: For complex queries with many rows EF Core sometimes can be faster than LINQ2DB and even ADO.

Conclusion

EF Core is a lot faster now than before.

.NET Core can work faster than .NET Framework when program is written with its optimizations. Such example is EF Core. You can see that ADO (despite it has separate version for Core) and LINQ2DB work different under .NET and Core but this difference is not as big as for EF Core.

EF Core works much faster under .NET Core - it's visible very good on the last picture - only EF Core has significant difference.

Now, with the .NET Core and EF Core both 3.1 they both may be a better choice than LINQ2DB.

EF Core is slightly slower but not much and sometimes even faster.

EF Core also has very good support from a biggest company, unlike LINQ2DB where you cannot count on it.

Another side of the choice is LTS.

.NET Core even LTS has only 3 years of support, unlike .NET Framework that has 10+ years of support (from Windows 10 LTSC version). It doesn't matter and even good if you're going to be in tune with newest tools, but it can be not so good otherwise.

Raw results (Excel).

View project source code at GitHub.

Entity Framework Core 2.0 and LINQ2DB Performace

We will look at EF Core 2.0 performance comparing to LINQ2DB - the fastest nowadays ORM. And also Entity Framework 6.

Hardware used: i5-4200H, DDR3-1600, Win 10 x64 1607.

Software used: SQL Server 2016 SP1, VS 2017, .NET 4.6.1, EF 6.1.3, LINQ to DB 1.8.3, EF Core 2.0.

Northwind database will be used.

You can see SQL-queries and testing methods in one of previous article.

Simple TOP 10 query

Further the gray part of bar denotes the context initialization.

EF Core still has a big overhead comparing to ADO.NET and LINQ2DB on simple queries. In my opinion performance impact can be from 50-70% for simple systems to 5-10% for enterprise systems (this is for simple queries).

Also you can see EF Core can't execute raw SQL queries fast. And EF Core can't execute custom result - you limited to entities.

Compiled EF Core queries are a bit faster (but still far from ADO.NET or LINQ2DB).

Simple TOP 500 query

EF Core queries (both LINQ and raw SQL) performance is near Entity Framework 6. ADO.NET and LINQ2DB are a little faster.

EF Core raw SQL queries are dramatically slow, so you won't see them later.

Complex TOP 10 query

For complex queries EF Core looks pretty well and can be compared to ADO.NET and LINQ2DB. Note that ADO.NET and LINQ2DB raw queries are a bit faster.

Complex TOP 500 query

Complex queries with many rows - both LINQ and compiled EF Core queries performance is as ADO.NET and LINQ2DB.

Conclusion

EF Core 2.0 still can't be used for raw SQL queries nor for speed nor for impossibility of executing custom data result.

A bad thing also is that EF Core is slower for simple queries.

The one good thing about EF Core is that it is nearly as fast for complex queries as ADO.NET and LINQ2DB (but anyway a bit slower).

Raw results (Excel).

View project source code at GitHub.

EF Core vs LINQ2DB

Entity Framework Core recently got v1.1.0. Though it still lacks some critical features like "GROUP BY" SQL translation (see its roadmap) it's time to test it.

The following frameworks will be tested:

1. Entity Framework CodeFirst (LINQ query, models generated from DB)
2. Entity Framework (raw SQL query)
3. ADO.NET
4. LINQ to DB (LINQ query, model entities generated from DB)
5. LINQ to DB (raw SQL query)
6. Entity Framework Core (doesn't support raw SQL execution at this moment)

Hardware used: i5-4200H, DDR3-1600, Win 10 x64 1607.

Software used: SQL Server 2016 SP1, VS 2015, .NET 4.6.1, EF 6.1.3, LINQ to DB 1.7.5, EF Core 1.1.0.

And default Northwind database.

The tests are the same as in one of the previous articles.

Note: EF Core doesn't use "GROUP BY" in generated SQL, instead it processes it in memory. This can lead to high load on the database in production.

Context Initialization

EF Core's context initialization is twice faster than EF 6. It matters for simple and fast queries.

Simple TOP 10 query

Here and below the grey part of bar is context initialization.

We can see that EF Core is faster than EF 6 when running simple queries. Though it's faster than EF 6 both in context initialization as well as in everything else but it still slower twice than LINQ2DB in overall.

Depending on the usage it might not be so bad, because absolute time is low.

Simple TOP 500 query

Results are almost the same, but now EF Core not to far from ADO.NET and LINQ2DB.

Complex TOP 10 query

Almost no difference between frameworks, except EF 6 which is 2x slower than others.

Complex TOP 500 query

The complex query with many result rows makes all frameworks nearly the same (again except EF 6 which is 2x slower than others).

Conclusions

EF Core is faster than EF 6. It's a good thing. But it still can't use "GROUP BY" clause in SQL although it's 1.1.0 version released. It's bad.

Another bad thing about EF Core is that it doesn't support raw SQL execution. It almost doesn't matter for complex queries, but usually applications have many simple queries, and here EF Core is weak - it can't be optimized more. Change tracking doesn't affect selects, and the only way for optimization is raw SQL.

So, if performance is not significant then EF Core can be chose. Otherwise, it's even EF 6 might be more preferable because it supports raw SQL execution which will help in heavy queries.

And if performance is important, or if change tracking is not required, then LINQ2DB may be the best choice. LINQ2DB's LINQ queries are not very slower than raw ADO.NET even for simple queries. And if it's not enough then raw SQL can be used. LINQ2DB is not new, so it hasn't such plenty of bugs as EF Core now.

Raw results (Excel).

View project source code at GitHub.

Performance of LINQ to DB vs Entity Framework vs BLToolkit vs ADO.NET

Last years BLToolkit is being developed slowly. The reason is its author Igor Tkachev decided to write a new ORM - LINQ to DB.

He says it provides fastest LINQ database access. And it supports 12 database providers including MSSQL, SQLite, Postgres. And it supports mass UPDATE and DELETE, and Bulk Copy.

Also, LINQ to DB provides mechanism similar to EF Code First generator. It has T4 template that generates code structure from the database. All you need is to put connection string and execute T4 template.

BLToolkit also supports LINQ, but it's main strength is not only speed but also mapping.

Let's compare it with other ORMs.

These tests were performed on i5-4200H, DDR3-1600, Win 8.1 x64, SQL Server 2014, VS 2013, .NET 4.5, EF 6.1.2, BLTookit 4.2.0, LINQ to DB 1.0.7.1. Default Northwind database was used.

Used tests are the same as in previous article.

There were 6 methods tested to work with database:

1. DbContext CodeFirst (LINQ query, models generated from DB)
2. DbContext CodeFirst (raw SQL query)
3. ADO.NET
4. Business Logic Toolkit (raw SQL query)
5. LINQ to DB (LINQ query, models entities generated from DB)
6. LINQ to DB (raw SQL query)

Context Initialization

EF CodeFirst with LINQ query takes much more time that others. LINQ to DB with LINQ query and CF wih raw SQL take nearly the same time, and take 2-3 times more than other raw SQL. But anyway for complex queries it doesn't matter much.

Simple TOP 10 query

Here and below the grey part of bar is context initialization.

For simple query, LINQ to DB query using LINQ takes twice more time than for raw SQL. But anyway it's much faster than EF, and even slightly faster that CF with raw SQL.

Simple TOP 500 query

When number of result rows is not small, then even for simple query difference is not much. It's because mapping takes significant part of time, and compilation of simple LINQ query is not so much. And we can see that new architecture for linq2db is more faster than BLToolkit. Even LINQ query with linq2db is faster that raw SQL with BLToolkit. LINQ to DB with raw SQL query is the same speed as ASO.NET.

Complex TOP 10 query

LINQ to DB compilation is very fast. This makes its LINQ query speed almost the same as ADO.NET. EF CF with LINQ query takes twice more time than others.

Complex TOP 500 query

Complex TOP 500 query results are the same.

Conclusions

LINQ to DB is very fast both with raw SQL or LINQ query. For simple and small queries it's possible to use raw SQL instead of LINQ, but absolute time makes almost no difference.

LINQ to DB is good choice for ORM if you don't need change-tracking. And if you don't need all BLToolkit mapping capabilities (linq2db supports type-to-type mapping).

Raw results (XSLT).

View project source code at GitHub.