Benchmarking serialization speed of YAML, JSON, Marshal, and MessagePack in Ruby, JRuby, and Rubinius

benchmark_results.rb

# ruby-2.5.0
                  user     system      total        real
YAML         15.112795   0.030577  15.143372 ( 15.190573)
JSON          0.648957   0.001520   0.650477 (  0.652856)
Marshal       0.474775   0.000922   0.475697 (  0.477678)
MessagePack   0.326430   0.001763   0.328193 (  0.330159)

# ruby-2.4.3
                  user     system      total        real
YAML         20.400000   0.050000  20.450000 ( 20.517600)
JSON          0.920000   0.000000   0.920000 (  0.927886)
Marshal       0.680000   0.000000   0.680000 (  0.680348)
MessagePack   0.490000   0.000000   0.490000 (  0.493976)

# ruby-2.3.6
                  user     system      total        real
YAML         20.100000   0.620000  20.720000 ( 20.777472)
JSON          1.000000   0.010000   1.010000 (  1.011932)
Marshal       0.610000   0.010000   0.620000 (  0.624355)
MessagePack   0.450000   0.010000   0.460000 (  0.464056)

# jruby-9.1.15.0
                  user     system      total        real
YAML         16.850000   0.070000  16.920000 ( 16.112922)
JSON          0.620000   0.000000   0.620000 (  0.621337)
Marshal       0.410000   0.000000   0.410000 (  0.399778)
MessagePack   0.340000   0.010000   0.350000 (  0.316007)

# rbx-3.86
                  user     system      total        real
YAML         74.938858   2.106479  77.045337 ( 75.922954)
JSON         17.461687   0.173907  17.635594 ( 17.563599)
Marshal      41.666180   0.270911  41.937091 ( 41.968574)
MessagePack   5.480164   0.263498   5.743662 (  5.389367)

serialization_benchmarks.rb

require 'benchmark'
require 'yaml'
require 'json'
require 'msgpack'

Benchmark.bmbm do |bm|
  this_many = 100_000
  this = {aim: true,
          nested: {number: 100_000_000,
                   string: 'my life close twice before...'}}
  
  bm.report 'YAML' do
    this_many.times do
      YAML.load YAML.dump(this)
    end
  end
  
  bm.report 'JSON' do
    this_many.times do
      JSON.parse JSON.generate(this)
    end
  end
  
  bm.report 'Marshal' do
    this_many.times do
      Marshal.load Marshal.dump(this)
    end
  end
  
  bm.report 'MessagePack' do
    this_many.times do
      MessagePack.unpack MessagePack.pack(this)
    end
  end
end

Oh that's a difference, I wonder if parsing is even worse for YAML. I guess it should be.