A quick look at Python class, dict, slots, and named tuple performance and memory usage

While most would say to use C or C++ or Rust or C# or Java... I decided I wanted to look at the edges of Python performance and memory usage. Specifically, I set out to figure out the best approach for efficiently approximating C structs or classes that are more about properties than functionality.

Python performance results for various data structures including dict, class, namedtuple, recordclass

I wanted to find what Python3 "class" or dictionary was most memory efficient but also fast for creating, updating and reading a single object. I chose to look at the following:

In the end I borrowed from these gists to create some Python code to test all of the above. Then I also found a "total size" function to estimate the size of the data structures in memory from this gist. Here's the code to measure and test Python's performance and memory usage.

The test involved the following:

  1. Create dictionary of 100,000 objects for each of the various "classes".
  2. Read each of object entry value.
  3. Read a sub-property of the each entry.
  4. Read and make a small calculation of two sub-properties.
  5. Make a top-level change/overwrite to each object.
  6. Read a property via a class method rather than directly.
  7. Change/overwrite a property via a class method rather than directly.
  8. Measure the memory footprint of the 100,000 object dictionary


Raw performance and memory test results

Python performance results for various data structures
Test Python dict Python class Python class + slots dataclass recordclass NamedTuple
creates / sec 369,377 264,405 354,373 274,175 418,359 307,269
reads / sec 17,076,394 24,402,513 25,380,031 21,810,119 28,528,798 24,930,480
sub-reads / sec 8,383,577 7,880,326 10,508,616 7,355,073 8,597,880 6,196,159
read + calc / sec 1,434,553 1,386,120 1,478,981 1,183,287 1,298,735 1,129,088
top-level change / sec 6,586,636 5,969,859 8,098,519 6,318,340 7,849,210 849,501
class read / sec 1,437,646 1,165,268 1,265,406 1,143,719 1,101,867 1,000,530
class update / sec 10,171,955 4,178,176 5,626,841 4,727,680 4,761,006 787,321
bytes per entry (memory) 658 170 178 170 154 346

Overall, performance was pretty high across the board. However creation of new objects was consistently slower across all approaches. No doubt this is due to the fact that memory has to be managed at some point. It was encouraging to see Python can generally manage millions of reads and updates per second in a single process/single thread. It's also pretty apparent that our default dictionary approach does indeed have some cost in terms of memory.


Normalized performance and memory test results for quick comparison

Visualization with request-volume normalization of Python performance results.
Test Python dict Python class Python class + slots dataclass recordclass NamedTuple
creates / sec 0.88 0.63 0.85 0.66 1.00 0.73
reads / sec 0.60 0.86 0.89 0.76 1.00 0.87
sub-reads / sec 0.80 0.75 1.00 0.70 0.82 0.59
read + calc / sec 0.97 0.94 1.00 0.80 0.88 0.76
top-level change / sec 0.81 0.74 1.00 0.78 0.97 0.10
class read / sec 1.00 0.81 0.88 0.80 0.77 0.70
class update / sec 1.00 0.41 0.55 0.46 0.47 0.08
bytes per entry (memory) 0.23 0.91 0.87 0.91 1.00 0.45

This view helps make a quick comparison of all options. Every row is normalized against the best entry in that row. Reading the first row, recordclass is the best in terms of creates per second while Python classes perform at 63% of recordclass's performance for that same creates per second metric.

Conclusion: What's is the best performing approach for managing "objects" in Python?

Let's just go with the ranked list approach from best to worst:

  1. Python class + slots - This approach really balanced everything. High performance, low memory usage.
  2. recordclass - This could have taken the #1 spot, but it's reads where a bit slower and it's still considered beta,.
  3. (Tie) Python class & dataclass - Both of these approaches did pretty well, though creates are slowest in the bunch.
  4. Python dict - if you don't care about memory or "class-style" properties, then python dict is very good, but with nearly 4x the memory overhead, it was moved down the list.
  5. NamedTuple - This approach doesn't really buy you anything compared to everything else on the list. More memory and slower perf due to working around immutability means it's the best of no worlds.


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