Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Numba VS QuickJS

Compare Numba VS QuickJS and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Numba logo Numba

Numba gives you the power to speed up your applications with high performance functions written...

QuickJS logo QuickJS

Application and Data, Build, Test, Deploy, and JavaScript Compilers
  • Numba Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-05
  • QuickJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-08-20

Numba features and specs

  • Performance
    Numba can significantly increase the speed of execution for numerically intensive Python code by compiling Python functions to optimized machine code using LLVM.
  • Ease of Use
    Numba is user-friendly and requires minimal code changes. Often, just applying a decorator to functions is enough to gain performance benefits.
  • Integration with NumPy
    Numba works well with NumPy, allowing users to compile functions that utilize NumPy arrays efficiently.
  • JIT Compilation
    It supports Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, enabling functions to be compiled at runtime, which allows for optimizations based on actual usage.
  • GPGPU Acceleration
    Numba offers support for GPU acceleration, which can further enhance performance by offloading tasks to NVIDIA GPUs using CUDA.

Possible disadvantages of Numba

  • Limited Python Feature Support
    Numba does not support all Python features and standard library modules, which can limit its applicability for certain functions or applications.
  • Compilation Overhead
    The initial compilation of functions can add overhead, which might negate performance gains for small or simple tasks.
  • Debugging Difficulty
    Debugging Numba-compiled code can be challenging due to the compiled nature of the code, which may obscure typical Python error messages.
  • Complex Code Compatibility
    More complex Python constructs, such as classes and closures, are not fully supported, requiring workarounds or alternative solutions.
  • Dependency on LLVM
    Numba heavily relies on the LLVM library for compilation, which can complicate installation and increase dependency size.

QuickJS features and specs

  • Lightweight
    QuickJS is designed to be lightweight with a small footprint, making it easy to embed in applications and suitable for resource-constrained environments.
  • Fast Startup Time
    QuickJS offers very fast startup times, which can be beneficial for applications that require quick script execution without a long initialization period.
  • Full ES2020 Support
    QuickJS supports the full ES2020 specification, providing modern JavaScript features and syntax, which is advantageous for developers who want to use the latest JavaScript features.
  • Embeddability
    Being easy to integrate into other applications or systems, QuickJS provides a simple C API, which facilitates embedding it in various software and platforms.
  • Single File Distribution
    QuickJS can be distributed as a single file, simplifying packaging and distribution without needing external dependencies.
  • Memory Efficiency
    Its memory efficient design allows QuickJS to run scripts in environments with limited memory resources, making it suitable for IoT devices and embedded systems.

Possible disadvantages of QuickJS

  • Limited Ecosystem
    QuickJS, being a relatively new and niche project, has a smaller ecosystem compared to more established JavaScript engines like V8, which means fewer libraries and community resources are available.
  • Performance
    While QuickJS is efficient, it may not deliver the same high-performance execution as more mature engines like V8, especially in applications requiring intensive computational processing.
  • Lack of Long-term Support
    QuickJS may not have the same level of long-term support and ongoing development as larger projects maintained by large companies or communities.
  • Single-threaded
    QuickJS runs in a single thread, which can be a limitation for applications that require multithreading support for parallel processing.
  • Limited Debugging Tools
    Compared to more popular JavaScript engines, QuickJS has fewer debugging tools and integrations, which might make development and troubleshooting more challenging.

Analysis of Numba

Overall verdict

  • Numba is considered good, especially if your work involves numerical computations that can take advantage of its just-in-time compilation. Its ability to speed up Python code while allowing you to remain within the Python ecosystem makes it a valuable tool for performance optimization in computationally demanding applications.

Why this product is good

  • Numba is a just-in-time compiler for Python that is particularly effective for numerical and scientific computing. It translates Python functions to optimized machine code at runtime using the LLVM compiler infrastructure. This can significantly accelerate execution speed, especially for operations that involve loops and computationally intensive tasks. It's an attractive option for developers looking for performance optimization without having to write C or C++ code. Numba is also easy to integrate with other popular scientific computing libraries such as NumPy.

Recommended for

  • Data scientists and engineers working with large datasets.
  • Developers involved in scientific computing and numerical analysis.
  • Researchers needing to optimize algorithms for speed without leaving Python.
  • Educational purposes for those learning about compiling and performance acceleration.

Numba videos

The Criminal History of RondoNumbaNine

More videos:

  • Review - lucky numba review
  • Review - RondoNumbaNine - Free RondoNumbaNine "Clint Masseyโ€ (Official Interview - WSHH Exclusive)

QuickJS videos

QuickJS - IO, axios, redaxios, fetch

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Numba and QuickJS)
Website Builder
100 100%
0% 0
Application And Data
0 0%
100% 100
Website Design
100 100%
0% 0
Development Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Numba and QuickJS. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Numba should be more popular than QuickJS. It has been mentiond 94 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Numba mentions (94)

  • Python JIT project was asked to pause development
    Also you can use projects like numba https://numba.pydata.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • I Use Nim Instead of Python for Data Processing
    >Not type safe That's the point. Look up what duck typing means in Python. Your program is meant to throw exceptions if you pass in data that doesn't look and act how it needs to. This means that in Python you don't need to do defensive programming. It's not like in C where you spend many hundreds of lines safe-guarding buffer lengths, memory allocation, return codes, static type sizes, and so on. That means that... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Gravitational Collapse of Spongebob
    I believe it is using Numba which converts to machine code. https://numba.pydata.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Mojo๐Ÿ”ฅ: Head -to-Head with Python and Numba
    Around the same time, I discovered Numba and was fascinated by how easily it could bring huge performance improvements to Python code. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Mojo: The usability of Python with the performance of C
    Or you use numba [1]. Then you can use a subset of plain Python. [1] https://numba.pydata.org/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
View more

QuickJS mentions (46)

  • Vim 9.2 Released
    You don't need V8 for running JS for scripting, you have quickjs[1] or mquickjs[2] for example. You might have problems importing npm packages, but as we can see from lua plugins you don't even need support for package managers. Performance is not as good as luajit, but it is good enough [1]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/ [2]: https://github.com/bellard/mquickjs. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS
    - QuickJS: https://bellard.org/quickjs/ Legendary. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Building a JavaScript Runtime from Scratch using C
    For those who would like a true "from scratch" implementation of JavaScript, Fabrice Bellard's QuickJS [1] is clean, readable and approachable. It's a full implementation of modern JavaScript in a straightforward project, not nearly as complex or difficult as V8. [1] https://bellard.org/quickjs/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • The many, many, many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade
    I see a few mentions of QuickJS, but they all refer to the fork of Bellard's QuickJS https://bellard.org/quickjs/, which I think deserves a mention. It seems to be still active (last release 2025-04-26, GitHub mirror at https://github.com/bellard/quickjs shows some activity). - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • SQLite JavaScript: Extend your database with JavaScript
    This is a fantastic approach. BTW, it looks like the js engine is "QuickJS" [0]. (I'm not familiar with it myself.) I like it because sqlite by itself lacks a host language. (e.g., Oracle's plsql, Postgreses pgplsql, Sqlserver's t-sql, etc). That is: code that runs on compute that is local to your storage. That's a nice flexible design -- you can choose whatever language you want. But quite typically you... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Numba and QuickJS, you can also consider the following products

Cython - Cython is a language that makes writing C extensions for the Python language as easy as Python...

Sciter - Embeddable HTML/CSS/script engine

NumPy - NumPy is the fundamental package for scientific computing with Python

nuitka - Nuitka is a Python compiler.

Nim (programming language) - The Nim programming language is a concise, fast programming language that compiles to C, C++ and JavaScript.

DaisyUI - Free UI components plugin for Tailwind CSS