SVG renderer benchmark

novasvg vs. Chromium (ground truth), novasvg, resvg, lunasvg, cairosvg, thorvg, nanosvg — 14 samples, each rendered at its own aspect ratio (fit within 320×320px), median of 5 runs per cell. Generated 2026-09-24 18:27 UTC.

Chromium (ground truth) is the reference every other engine is checked against, not a competitor — its render time includes full browser page-navigation overhead (one shared instance for the whole corpus, one render each, no median-of-N) and isn't meant to be compared against the others' numbers. Under each other render, RMSE (root mean squared error against the ground-truth render, same pixel dimensions, all 4 RGBA channels, back on the 0-255 scale) gives a rough sense of how visually close it landed — squaring before the square root weights a handful of badly-wrong pixels (a missing filter, a wrong fill, a shifted shape) far more than the routine anti-aliasing noise along every edge, so low single digits is essentially imperceptible and anything in the tens or higher usually means something structural differs.

nanosvg is included as a lightweight baseline, not a fair fight with the other 5 — it's a minimal path/gradient rasterizer with no CSS, no filters, and no text layout, so its FAILs and blank renders on filter- or text-heavy samples below are expected scope, not bugs.

Engine versions

Engine	Version	Rendered OK	Avg time / sample	Total time
Chromium (ground truth)	Chromium 141.0.7390.37	14/14	70.77 ms	990.75 ms
novasvg	0.3.0	14/14	7.10 ms	99.38 ms
resvg	0.45.1	14/14	2.71 ms	38.01 ms
lunasvg	3.5.0	14/14	3.76 ms	52.63 ms
cairosvg	2.9.1	14/14	23.70 ms	331.84 ms
thorvg	1.0.0	14/14	0.75 ms	10.50 ms
nanosvg	git-master (no version macro upstream)	14/14	3.04 ms	42.58 ms

Rendered output

Same size (that sample's own aspect ratio, fit within 320×320px) from every engine, side by side, so visual differences (missing text, wrong fills, unapplied filters, ...) are easy to spot. Click any render to zoom in.

circle (320×320px)

plain shape

Chromium (ground truth) render of circle — Chromium (ground truth)
79.22 ms
reference

novasvg render of circle — novasvg
0.79 ms
RMSE 1.81

resvg render of circle — resvg
0.39 ms
RMSE 1.38

lunasvg render of circle — lunasvg
0.72 ms
RMSE 1.81

cairosvg render of circle — cairosvg
5.49 ms
RMSE 1.80

thorvg render of circle — thorvg
0.50 ms
RMSE 1.62

nanosvg render of circle — nanosvg
2.41 ms
RMSE 2.39

rect (320×320px)

plain shape

Chromium (ground truth) render of rect — Chromium (ground truth)
46.22 ms
reference

novasvg render of rect — novasvg
0.25 ms
RMSE 0.00

resvg render of rect — resvg
0.09 ms
RMSE 0.00

lunasvg render of rect — lunasvg
0.16 ms
RMSE 0.00

cairosvg render of rect — cairosvg
3.87 ms
RMSE 0.00

thorvg render of rect — thorvg
0.19 ms
RMSE 0.00

nanosvg render of rect — nanosvg
3.18 ms
RMSE 1.57

tiger (320×320px)

complex path-heavy vector art

Chromium (ground truth) render of tiger — Chromium (ground truth)
69.88 ms
reference

novasvg render of tiger — novasvg
16.90 ms
RMSE 5.96

resvg render of tiger — resvg
6.59 ms
RMSE 5.24

lunasvg render of tiger — lunasvg
19.38 ms
RMSE 5.96

cairosvg render of tiger — cairosvg
70.76 ms
RMSE 5.61

thorvg render of tiger — thorvg
6.21 ms
RMSE 5.91

nanosvg render of tiger — nanosvg
19.34 ms
RMSE 11.48

nova-logo (320×161px)

logo, mixed shapes/gradients

Chromium (ground truth)
39.20 ms
reference

novasvg
1.30 ms
RMSE 10.13

resvg
0.89 ms
RMSE 8.40

lunasvg
1.28 ms
RMSE 10.13

cairosvg
9.23 ms
RMSE 9.22

thorvg
0.53 ms
RMSE 9.03

nanosvg
1.75 ms
RMSE 25.05

clip-mask (320×160px)

clip-path + luminance mask

Chromium (ground truth) render of clip-mask — Chromium (ground truth)
41.68 ms
reference

novasvg render of clip-mask — novasvg
0.56 ms
RMSE 4.35

resvg render of clip-mask — resvg
0.94 ms
RMSE 6.26

lunasvg render of clip-mask — lunasvg
0.55 ms
RMSE 4.35

cairosvg render of clip-mask — cairosvg
3.43 ms
RMSE 97.46

thorvg render of clip-mask — thorvg
0.34 ms
RMSE 4.17

nanosvg render of clip-mask — nanosvg
1.42 ms
RMSE 118.00

gradient-filter (320×160px)

gradients + SVG filter

Chromium (ground truth) render of gradient-filter — Chromium (ground truth)
39.50 ms
reference

novasvg render of gradient-filter — novasvg
13.77 ms
RMSE 8.17

resvg render of gradient-filter — resvg
12.72 ms
RMSE 13.36

lunasvg render of gradient-filter — lunasvg
0.38 ms
RMSE 42.82

cairosvg render of gradient-filter — cairosvg
4.92 ms
RMSE 42.84

thorvg render of gradient-filter — thorvg
0.47 ms
RMSE 15.63

nanosvg render of gradient-filter — nanosvg
1.44 ms
RMSE 49.63

filter-primitives (320×120px)

chained filter primitives (blur/offset/flood/composite)

Chromium (ground truth) render of filter-primitives — Chromium (ground truth)
44.17 ms
reference

novasvg render of filter-primitives — novasvg
5.24 ms
RMSE 2.41

resvg render of filter-primitives — resvg
8.60 ms
RMSE 2.07

lunasvg render of filter-primitives — lunasvg
0.08 ms
RMSE 9.07

cairosvg render of filter-primitives — cairosvg
2.35 ms
RMSE 36.92

thorvg render of filter-primitives — thorvg
0.29 ms
RMSE 38.92

nanosvg render of filter-primitives — nanosvg
0.56 ms
RMSE 17.48

css-use-symbol (320×160px)

CSS transform + <use>/<symbol>

Chromium (ground truth) render of css-use-symbol — Chromium (ground truth)
32.53 ms
reference

novasvg render of css-use-symbol — novasvg
0.45 ms
RMSE 1.54

resvg render of css-use-symbol — resvg
0.34 ms
RMSE 26.32

lunasvg render of css-use-symbol — lunasvg
0.36 ms
RMSE 26.36

cairosvg render of css-use-symbol — cairosvg
3.98 ms
RMSE 26.35

thorvg render of css-use-symbol — thorvg
0.20 ms
RMSE 26.33

nanosvg render of css-use-symbol — nanosvg
0.52 ms
RMSE 69.54

base64-image (320×160px)

embedded raster <image>

Chromium (ground truth) render of base64-image — Chromium (ground truth)
49.16 ms
reference

novasvg render of base64-image — novasvg
1.15 ms
RMSE 24.61

resvg render of base64-image — resvg
1.64 ms
RMSE 18.98

lunasvg render of base64-image — lunasvg
1.10 ms
RMSE 24.67

cairosvg render of base64-image — cairosvg
3.98 ms
RMSE 28.86

thorvg render of base64-image — thorvg
0.16 ms
RMSE 93.30

nanosvg render of base64-image — nanosvg
1.36 ms
RMSE 93.30

mermaid-flowchart (273×320px)

<foreignObject> text, CSS classDef fills

Chromium (ground truth) render of mermaid-flowchart — Chromium (ground truth)
304.69 ms
reference

novasvg render of mermaid-flowchart — novasvg
9.72 ms
RMSE 12.38

resvg render of mermaid-flowchart — resvg
1.01 ms
RMSE 23.90

lunasvg render of mermaid-flowchart — lunasvg
4.13 ms
RMSE 25.25

cairosvg render of mermaid-flowchart — cairosvg
23.22 ms
RMSE 25.32

thorvg render of mermaid-flowchart — thorvg
0.48 ms
RMSE 39.77

nanosvg render of mermaid-flowchart — nanosvg
1.88 ms
RMSE 31.11

embedded-font (320×80px)

plain <text>, @font-face embedded TTF/OTF

Chromium (ground truth) render of embedded-font — Chromium (ground truth)
76.72 ms
reference

novasvg render of embedded-font — novasvg
18.35 ms
RMSE 37.41

resvg render of embedded-font — resvg
1.93 ms
RMSE 39.28

lunasvg render of embedded-font — lunasvg
10.53 ms
RMSE 44.29

cairosvg render of embedded-font — cairosvg
93.33 ms
RMSE 45.96

thorvg render of embedded-font — thorvg
0.23 ms
RMSE 39.28

nanosvg render of embedded-font — nanosvg
3.01 ms
RMSE 39.28

embedded-font-distinctive (320×112px)

embedded monospace font vs. an unresolvable family, side by side

Chromium (ground truth) render of embedded-font-distinctive — Chromium (ground truth)
69.79 ms
reference

novasvg render of embedded-font-distinctive — novasvg
16.62 ms
RMSE 55.83

resvg render of embedded-font-distinctive — resvg
1.59 ms
RMSE 48.42

lunasvg render of embedded-font-distinctive — lunasvg
10.36 ms
RMSE 58.28

cairosvg render of embedded-font-distinctive — cairosvg
76.18 ms
RMSE 58.52

thorvg render of embedded-font-distinctive — thorvg
0.21 ms
RMSE 48.42

nanosvg render of embedded-font-distinctive — nanosvg
2.42 ms
RMSE 48.42

mermaid-venn (320×180px)

plain shapes/text via <foreignObject> (mermaid venn diagram)

Chromium (ground truth) render of mermaid-venn — Chromium (ground truth)
49.82 ms
reference

novasvg render of mermaid-venn — novasvg
8.17 ms
RMSE 6.99

resvg render of mermaid-venn — resvg
0.55 ms
RMSE 16.28

lunasvg render of mermaid-venn — lunasvg
1.74 ms
RMSE 198.51

cairosvg render of mermaid-venn — cairosvg
15.53 ms
RMSE 198.39

thorvg render of mermaid-venn — thorvg
0.43 ms
RMSE 198.80

nanosvg render of mermaid-venn — nanosvg
1.85 ms
RMSE 207.54

mermaid-block (320×154px)

<foreignObject> text + CSS classDef fills (mermaid block diagram)

Chromium (ground truth) render of mermaid-block — Chromium (ground truth)
48.16 ms
reference

novasvg render of mermaid-block — novasvg
6.12 ms
RMSE 3.77

resvg render of mermaid-block — resvg
0.73 ms
RMSE 8.48

lunasvg render of mermaid-block — lunasvg
1.86 ms
RMSE 203.35

cairosvg render of mermaid-block — cairosvg
15.57 ms
RMSE 203.35

thorvg render of mermaid-block — thorvg
0.27 ms
RMSE 235.74

nanosvg render of mermaid-block — nanosvg
1.44 ms
RMSE 201.19

Built entirely by benchmarks/CMakeLists.txt (cmake --build build --target novasvg_benchmark) from novasvg's own data/ sample corpus. novasvg, resvg, lunasvg, thorvg and nanosvg are each driven directly through their own C/C++ API in one process (native/*_native_bench.cpp) — no CLI, no per-render subprocess, no Python bindings. cairosvg is the one exception (it has no native library of its own to link against) and runs through its Python binding instead. Chromium (ground truth) is driven through Playwright. This report is fully self-contained — every image is a base64 data URI, no external files or network access required to view it.