Skip to main content

​
Installation

For all Rust integrations, you will need the cargo-codspeed command to build and run your CodSpeed benchmarks
Install the criterion.rs compatibility layer: 
cargo add --dev codspeed-criterion-compat --rename criterion
Or directly change your Cargo.toml if you already have criterion installed: 
[dev-dependencies]
criterion = { package = "codspeed-criterion-compat", version = "*" }
This will install the codspeed-criterion-compat crate and rename it to criterion in your Cargo.toml. This way, you can keep your existing imports and the compatibility layer will take care of the rest.
The compatibility layer is a passthrough when not using cargo codspeed, running cargo bench will behave exactly as with the default criterion crate.
If you prefer, you can also install codspeed-criterion-compat as is and change your imports to use this new crate name.

​
Usage

​
Creating benchmarks

As an example, let’s follow the example from the Criterion.rs documentation: a benchmark suite for the Fibonacci function:
benches/my_benchmark.rs
use criterion::{black_box, criterion_group, criterion_main, Criterion};

fn fibonacci(n: u64) -> u64 {
    match n {
        0 => 1,
        1 => 1,
        n => fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2),
    }
}

pub fn criterion_benchmark(c: &mut Criterion) {
    c.bench_function("fib 20", |b| b.iter(|| fibonacci(black_box(20))));
}

criterion_group!(benches, criterion_benchmark);
criterion_main!(benches);
The last step in creating the Criterion benchmark is to add the new benchmark target in your Cargo.toml:
Cargo.toml
[[bench]]
name = "my_benchmark"
harness = false
And that’s it! You can now run your benchmark suite with CodSpeed

​
Testing the benchmarks locally

terminal
$ cargo codspeed build
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 0.12s
    Finished built 1 benchmark suite(s)

$ cargo codspeed run
   Collected 1 benchmark suite(s) to run
     Running my_benchmark
Using codspeed-criterion-compat v1.0.0 compatibility layer
NOTICE: codspeed is enabled, but no performance measurement will be made since it's running in an unknown environment.
Checked: benches/bencher_example.rs::fib_20 (group: benches)
        Done running bencher_example
    Finished running 1 benchmark suite(s)
Congrats ! 🎉 You can now run those benchmark in your CI to get the actual performance measurements 👇.
Use --measurement-mode / -m to select the CodSpeed instrument:
  • simulation (default): Runs benchmarks once on a simulated CPU for consistent measurements.
  • walltime: Measures wall-clock time for real-world scenarios.
  • memory: Benchmarks are run once using memory profiling to track heap allocations and memory usage.
See the cargo-codspeed reference for more information.

​
Running the benchmarks in your CI

To generate performance reports, you need to run the benchmarks in your CI. This allows CodSpeed to automatically run benchmarks and warn you about regressions during development.
If you want more details on how to configure the CodSpeed action, you can check out the Continuous Reporting section.
Here is an example of a GitHub Actions workflow that runs the benchmarks and reports the results to CodSpeed on every push to the main branch and every pull request:
.github/workflows/codspeed.yml
name: CodSpeed Benchmarks

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - "main" # or "master"
  pull_request:
  # `workflow_dispatch` allows CodSpeed to trigger backtest
  # performance analysis in order to generate initial data.
  workflow_dispatch:

permissions: # optional for public repositories
  contents: read # required for actions/checkout
  id-token: write # required for OIDC authentication with CodSpeed
  
jobs:
  benchmarks:
    name: Run benchmarks
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - name: Setup rust toolchain, cache and cargo-codspeed binary
        uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v1
        with:
          channel: stable
          cache-target: release
          bins: cargo-codspeed
      - name: Build the benchmark target(s)
        run: cargo codspeed build
      - name: Run the benchmarks
        uses: CodSpeedHQ/action@v4
        with:
          mode: simulation
          run: cargo codspeed run

​
Recipes

​
Running benchmarks in parallel CI jobs

With Rust, if you use multiple packages, a first sharding optimization is to split your benchmarks across these packages. For example, using Github Actions: 
jobs:
  benchmarks:
    name: Run benchmarks
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        package:
          - my-first-package
          - my-second-package
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - name: Setup rust toolchain, cache and cargo-codspeed binary
        uses: moonrepo/setup-rust@v1
        with:
          channel: stable
          cache-target: release
          bins: cargo-codspeed
      - name: Build the benchmark target(s)
        run: cargo codspeed build -p ${{ matrix.package }}
      - name: Run the benchmarks
        uses: CodSpeedHQ/action@v4
        with:
          mode: simulation
          run: cargo codspeed run # only runs the built benchmarks
It is not required to pass a -p flag as only the benchmarks built by cargo codspeed build will be run.
For more information about multiple packages, check the cargo-codspeed docs. With Criterion, there is currently no way to split your benchmarks automatically, but you can use a filter expression (view docs).
Same benchmark with different variationsFor now, you cannot run the same benchmarks several times within the same run. If the same benchmark is run multiple times, you will receive the following comment on your pull request:Multiple Benchmark Variations Error Message
Learn more about benchmark sharding and how to integrate with your CI provider.
To combine measurement modes like simulation and memory, check out the documentation on running multiple instruments serially.