sing-box vs xray

An attempt on benchmarking these two multi-protocol proxying frameworks. It's reproducible, configs are not redacted, I even uploaded self-signed TLS cert+key, client commands are shown in bench_*.txt files. All you need is iperf3 on client and server, hyperfine on client, xray and sing-box binaries (take from "Releases" or compile by yourself) placed on client and server.

In a nutshell

Results are inaccurate, they look like a statistical error, made by, for example, different ISP's network load, that's why I said "an attempt on benchmarking".

Both proxies are almost the same speed. Xray was sometimes a bit faster. But in iperf3 benchmark it often behaved weird: from 2nd packet speed was dropping to zero.

So, use what you want / to what you already get used / what works better in your case. As for me, I found sing-box' JSON config more convenient than Xray's. On the other hand, Xray provides more features to hide a proxy, that is important, I guess (?), in China and Iran.

Version

sing-box built from dev-next branch, 26f092d

sing-box version unknown

Environment: go1.23.2 linux/amd64
Tags: with_gvisor,with_dhcp,with_wireguard,with_reality_server,with_clash_api,with_quic,with_utls,with_ech
Revision: d97a7569507816bf2ac1a355e19d26b521fb046e
CGO: enabled

Xray-core built from main branch, 5a96ef6

Xray 24.11.11 (Xray, Penetrates Everything.) 5a96ef6 (go1.23.2 linux/amd64)
A unified platform for anti-censorship.

hyperfine, curl, direct outbound

File: bench_curl_direct.txt

Measurement of execution time of curl. Shows overhead of a proxying software.

Proxies are set up to accept requests by SOCKSv5 and forward directly to net.

units: ms (less is better)

~1.5M binary file over https from dc09.ru

proxy	min	avg	max
no proxy	383.3	477.2	697.7
sing-box	376.4	478.6	681.2
xray	374.2	467.7	662.8

162 bytes HTML over plain http from dc09.ru

proxy	min	avg	max
no proxy	51.0	60.5	81.7
sing-box	49.1	62.2	69.9
xray	51.2	61.6	76.4

~150K HTML over https from github.com

proxy	min	avg	max
no proxy	365.3	402.1	449.8
sing-box	338.6	390.5	445.5
xray	342.3	390.8	426.0

iperf3, proxied outbound

Measurement of bandwidth with iperf3. Shows processing speed of a proxying software.

Client proxy (sing-box or xray, specified by a table column) is connected to SOCKSv5, Trojan or VLESS inbound on dc09.ru; server proxy on dc09.ru is either sing-box or xray (heading before a table), accepts requests on all 3 inbounds; iperf3 server is on the same host as a server proxy.

units: Mbit/s (more is better)

no proxy

File: bench_iperf_noproxy.txt

sender 93.7 Mbit/s (receiver 91.4 Mbit/s)

server is sing-box

File: bench_sb_*.txt

protocol	sing-box	xray client
SOCKSv5	102.0 (91.3)	102.0 (91.3)
Trojan	101.3 (91.0)	100.5 (90.6)
VLESS	101.3 (91.3)	101.5 (90.7)

server is xray

File: bench_xray_*.txt

protocol	sing-box	xray client
SOCKSv5	101.5 (91.3)	103.0 (91.4)
Trojan	100.1 (90.0)	100.5 (90.6)
VLESS	99.6 (91.1)	102.0 (91.1)