Disclaimer: Those benchmarks are probably far from real world usage scenarios and should not be taken too seriously before doing tests with your use-case in mind first.
If you feel any of the code available is wrong, please open a PR with a suggested fix.
The idea is just to hit some webpage doing a GET request to / and receiving the result body back.
For libraries that do not return the data as string, code to do that should be added, as is the case with Node.js http.request, node-fetch and node-libcurl.Easy.
A local server can be started with npm run start-server.
Benchmark can be started with npm run start.
node.js http.request - GET x 395 ops/sec ±3.92% (68 runs sampled)
axios - GET x 328 ops/sec ±5.84% (64 runs sampled)
superagent - GET x 410 ops/sec ±2.31% (75 runs sampled)
request - GET x 405 ops/sec ±2.85% (75 runs sampled)
fetch - GET x 392 ops/sec ±3.66% (70 runs sampled)
node-libcurl curly - GET x 657 ops/sec ±1.78% (77 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - GET x 696 ops/sec ±1.66% (79 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET x 673 ops/sec ±2.17% (78 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - GET x 173 ops/sec ±12.30% (55 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET x 532 ops/sec ±5.42% (63 runs sampled)
Fastest is node-libcurl Curl - GET
Done in 61.27s
node.js http.request - GET x 3.62 ops/sec ±1.87% (22 runs sampled)
axios - GET x 3.65 ops/sec ±2.60% (22 runs sampled)
superagent - GET x 3.68 ops/sec ±1.20% (22 runs sampled)
request - GET x 3.64 ops/sec ±1.73% (22 runs sampled)
fetch - GET x 3.67 ops/sec ±1.26% (22 runs sampled)
node-libcurl curly - GET x 7.16 ops/sec ±5.35% (39 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - GET x 7.30 ops/sec ±1.51% (39 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET x 7.25 ops/sec ±2.16% (38 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - GET x 3.60 ops/sec ±2.50% (13 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET x 3.62 ops/sec ±1.25% (22 runs sampled)
Fastest is node-libcurl Curl - GET,node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET,node-libcurl curly - GET
Done in 64.24s.
node.js http.request - GET x 851 ops/sec ±6.15% (64 runs sampled)
axios - GET x 709 ops/sec ±17.13% (66 runs sampled)
superagent - GET x 687 ops/sec ±37.44% (66 runs sampled)
request - GET x 814 ops/sec ±5.18% (71 runs sampled)
fetch - GET x 31.91 ops/sec ±206.96% (14 runs sampled)
node-libcurl curly - GET x 956 ops/sec ±14.76% (60 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - GET x 1,155 ops/sec ±10.47% (67 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET x 1,178 ops/sec ±5.78% (74 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - GET x 875 ops/sec ±6.66% (77 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET x 1,333 ops/sec ±3.19% (76 runs sampled)
Fastest is node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET
✨ Done in 77.74s
node.js http.request - GET x 3.55 ops/sec ±6.69% (22 runs sampled)
axios - GET x 3.69 ops/sec ±1.05% (22 runs sampled)
superagent - GET x 3.62 ops/sec ±1.79% (22 runs sampled)
request - GET x 3.65 ops/sec ±1.92% (22 runs sampled)
fetch - GET x 3.60 ops/sec ±1.74% (22 runs sampled)
node-libcurl curly - GET x 6.79 ops/sec ±7.51% (38 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - GET x 5.90 ops/sec ±11.24% (34 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET x 7.22 ops/sec ±1.61% (38 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - GET x 3.66 ops/sec ±1.65% (14 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET x 3.62 ops/sec ±3.02% (22 runs sampled)
Fastest is node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET,node-libcurl curly - GET
✨ Done in 67.36s.
axios - GET x 611 ops/sec ±2.14% (78 runs sampled)
superagent - GET x 681 ops/sec ±1.80% (77 runs sampled)
request - GET x 671 ops/sec ±2.14% (76 runs sampled)
fetch - GET x 686 ops/sec ±2.17% (77 runs sampled)
node-libcurl curly - GET x 857 ops/sec ±1.95% (76 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - GET x 885 ops/sec ±2.00% (78 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET x 887 ops/sec ±2.36% (77 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - GET x 887 ops/sec ±1.61% (81 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET x 1,007 ops/sec ±1.62% (78 runs sampled)
Fastest is node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET
real 0m59,502s
user 0m19,020s
sys 0m3,756snode.js http.request - GET x 3.42 ops/sec ±0.95% (21 runs sampled)
axios - GET x 3.44 ops/sec ±1.16% (21 runs sampled)
superagent - GET x 3.41 ops/sec ±1.31% (21 runs sampled)
request - GET x 3.43 ops/sec ±1.37% (21 runs sampled)
fetch - GET x 3.38 ops/sec ±0.83% (21 runs sampled)
node-libcurl curly - GET x 6.61 ops/sec ±5.47% (36 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - GET x 6.82 ops/sec ±0.09% (36 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Curl - reusing instance - GET x 6.80 ops/sec ±0.10% (36 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - GET x 3.46 ops/sec ±1.18% (13 runs sampled)
node-libcurl Easy - reusing instance - GET x 3.44 ops/sec ±1.02% (21 runs sampled)
Fastest is node-libcurl Curl - GET
real 1m5,417s
user 0m3,469s
sys 0m0,229s