Typesetting Benchmark

A benchmark comparing six PDF typesetting engines on a simple mail merge task.

Each tool gets the same XML data (name, address) and produces the same letter layout: logo top-right, sender info on the right, recipient on the left, body text at 105mm width with hyphenation.

Tools

Tool	Template	Runner
speedata Publisher (sp)	mailmergesp.xml	run_sp.sh
Typst	mailmerge.typ	run_typst.sh
pdflatex	mailmerge_template.tex + mailmerge_latex.py	run_latex.sh
LuaLaTeX	mailmerge_template_lualatex.tex + mailmerge_lualatex.py	run_lualatex.sh
WeasyPrint	mailmerge_template.html + mailmerge_weasy.py	run_weasy.sh
Apache FOP	mailmerge.xsl	run_fop.sh

Prerequisites

• hyperfine for benchmarking
• Python 3 with Jinja2 and WeasyPrint (pip install jinja2 weasyprint)
• pdflatex and lualatex (e.g. via TeX Live)
• Typst
• Apache FOP
• speedata Publisher

Versions used

Tool	Version
Python	3.14.3
Jinja2	3.1.6
WeasyPrint	68.1
Typst	0.14.2
pdfTeX (pdflatex)	3.141592653-2.6-1.40.24 (TeX Live 2022)
LuaHBTeX (lualatex)	1.15.0 (TeX Live 2022)
Apache FOP	2.11
speedata Publisher	5.3.18 (Pro)
hyperfine	1.17.0

Running

Each run_*.sh script accepts 1 or 500 as argument for the number of pages:

./run_typst.sh 1      # 1 page
./run_typst.sh 500    # 500 pages (generates fakenames_500.xml if needed)

Run all benchmarks:

./benchmark.sh

Results

macBook Air M4 16 GB RAM

=== Benchmark: 1 page ===
Benchmark 1: typst
  Time (mean ± σ):     105.7 ms ±   7.4 ms    [User: 70.5 ms, System: 33.8 ms]
  Range (min … max):    99.6 ms … 124.6 ms    23 runs

Benchmark 2: pdflatex
  Time (mean ± σ):     329.1 ms ±   5.8 ms    [User: 291.0 ms, System: 33.4 ms]
  Range (min … max):   323.4 ms … 341.3 ms    10 runs

Benchmark 3: lualatex
  Time (mean ± σ):     518.6 ms ±   5.7 ms    [User: 462.4 ms, System: 54.0 ms]
  Range (min … max):   511.8 ms … 530.5 ms    10 runs

Benchmark 4: weasyprint
  Time (mean ± σ):     335.2 ms ±   4.8 ms    [User: 298.9 ms, System: 34.1 ms]
  Range (min … max):   331.2 ms … 347.5 ms    10 runs

Benchmark 5: fop
  Time (mean ± σ):     532.3 ms ±  11.2 ms    [User: 813.9 ms, System: 60.9 ms]
  Range (min … max):   521.1 ms … 560.2 ms    10 runs

Benchmark 6: sp
  Time (mean ± σ):      94.5 ms ±   1.7 ms    [User: 74.2 ms, System: 21.8 ms]
  Range (min … max):    92.6 ms … 101.0 ms    31 runs

Summary
  sp ran
    1.12 ± 0.08 times faster than typst
    3.48 ± 0.09 times faster than pdflatex
    3.55 ± 0.08 times faster than weasyprint
    5.49 ± 0.12 times faster than lualatex
    5.63 ± 0.16 times faster than fop

=== Benchmark: 500 pages ===
Benchmark 1: typst
  Time (mean ± σ):     156.6 ms ±   2.8 ms    [User: 241.3 ms, System: 66.9 ms]
  Range (min … max):   153.1 ms … 161.2 ms    19 runs

Benchmark 2: pdflatex
  Time (mean ± σ):     712.3 ms ±   7.4 ms    [User: 665.0 ms, System: 50.6 ms]
  Range (min … max):   706.0 ms … 722.7 ms    4 runs

Benchmark 3: lualatex
  Time (mean ± σ):      2.356 s ±  0.013 s    [User: 2.203 s, System: 0.156 s]
  Range (min … max):    2.343 s …  2.369 s    3 runs

Benchmark 4: weasyprint
  Time (mean ± σ):      8.672 s ±  0.015 s    [User: 7.905 s, System: 0.758 s]
  Range (min … max):    8.660 s …  8.689 s    3 runs

Benchmark 5: fop
  Time (mean ± σ):      1.607 s ±  0.016 s    [User: 3.969 s, System: 0.129 s]
  Range (min … max):    1.590 s …  1.618 s    3 runs

Benchmark 6: sp
  Time (mean ± σ):      4.354 s ±  0.020 s    [User: 4.278 s, System: 0.099 s]
  Range (min … max):    4.335 s …  4.375 s    3 runs

Summary
  typst ran
    4.55 ± 0.09 times faster than pdflatex
   10.27 ± 0.21 times faster than fop
   15.04 ± 0.28 times faster than lualatex
   27.80 ± 0.51 times faster than sp
   55.38 ± 0.99 times faster than weasyprint

Output comparison

speedata Publisher	Typst	pdflatex

LuaLaTeX	WeasyPrint	Apache FOP

Data

• fakenames.xml — 1 test record
• generate_fakenames.py — generates fakenames_500.xml (500 copies of the record)

Blog post

See this blog post for a write-up of the results.