Results

The function onePdfPerPage is the fastest one with an average of 230ms, even though it is processing each HTML file sequentially.

The second best is twoBrowsers with an average of 371ms. Note that this has a similar approach to onePdfPerPage in parallel.

System

My laptop, ThinkPad x230, Core I5, 6GB of RAM. Many other things running at the same time.

Output

Using naivePDF to generate 10 PDFs 3 times
naivePDF: 8588.192ms
Average of rendering 10 pdfs with naivePDF 3 times: 862595312μ seconds ( 862ms 2s)

Using onePdfPerPage to generate 10 PDFs 3 times
onePdfPerPage: 3691.680ms
Average of rendering 10 pdfs with onePdfPerPage 3 times: 230534631.33333334μ seconds ( 230ms 1s)

Using singlePage to generate 10 PDFs 3 times
singlePage: 1541.935ms
Average of rendering 10 pdfs with singlePage 3 times: 513966344.6666667μ seconds ( 513ms 0s)

Using twoBrowsers to generate 10 PDFs 3 times
working on 5,6,7,8,9
working on 0,1,2,3,4
working on 0,1,2,3,4
working on 5,6,7,8,9
working on 0,1,2,3,4
working on 5,6,7,8,9
twoBrowsers: 1124.634ms
Average of rendering 10 pdfs with twoBrowsers 3 times: 374855282.3333333μ seconds ( 374ms 0s)

Using oneBrowserTwoPages to generate 10 PDFs 3 times
working on 5,6,7,8,9
working on 0,1,2,3,4
working on 0,1,2,3,4
working on 5,6,7,8,9
working on 0,1,2,3,4
working on 5,6,7,8,9
oneBrowserTwoPages: 1470.782ms
Average of rendering 10 pdfs with oneBrowserTwoPages 3 times: 490247475.6666667μ seconds ( 490ms 0s)

Using manyPages to generate 10 PDFs 3 times
(node:688) MaxListenersExceededWarning: Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected. 11 Symbol(Connection.Events.Disconnected) listeners added. Use emitter.setMaxListeners() to increase limit
(node:688) MaxListenersExceededWarning: Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected. 11 Symbol(Connection.Events.Disconnected) listeners added. Use emitter.setMaxListeners() to increase limit
(node:688) MaxListenersExceededWarning: Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected. 11 Symbol(Connection.Events.Disconnected) listeners added. Use emitter.setMaxListeners() to increase limit
manyPages: 2519.344ms
Average of rendering 10 pdfs with manyPages 3 times: 839769635μ seconds ( 839ms 0s)

End

Benchmark

There are a few ways to render multiple HTML files into PDF when using puppeteer. In this small research, I are considered 5 different ways to render a batch of PDF files.

Methods

naivePDF

This method creates one puppeteer instance, create one page, render one HTML file into PDF and closes puppeteer before starting the next job.

onePdfPerPage

Open one puppeteer instance, create one page, render and destroy the page. Next job simply calls a new page. After all files are rendered, close puppeteer.

singlePage

Open one puppeteer instance, create one page, render and instead of destroying the page, instruct it to open the next HTML file to render.

twoBrowsers

Opens up two puppeteer instances, each processing half of the batch using onePdfPerPage strategy

oneBrowserTwoPages

Similar to singlePage but there are only two pages ever created that each process half of the batch.

manyPages

For each job in the batch, open a new page and render a pdf. After all is done, close puppeteer.

Tuning the benchmark

There are three variables that can alter the benchmark's behavior:

• numberOfPds, the batch size of PDF to be rendered.
• interactions, the number of times to run each rendering method.
• functions, the methods that are executed and compared.

Running it yourself

You know the drill with nodejs things...

$> npm install
$> node index.js