Latest verified snapshots
Performance benchmarks last run on 21 Apr 2026.
Benchmark Comparison
ZingPDF performance
We continually optimise ZingPDF for speed, and aim to be completely transparent about our metrics.
These benchmarks compare ZingPDF with PDFsharp, PdfPig, and iText on in-memory .NET workloads including page access, plain-text extraction, page appends, and document merges.
Methodology
How these numbers were produced
Runtime
.NET 8 on Windows 11, measured with BenchmarkDotNet on a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700HX.
Input model
Benchmarks use fully buffered MemoryStream inputs, so the results emphasize parser and
object-model efficiency rather than disk or network I/O.
Scope
This page focuses on representative workloads: access, extraction, append, and merge. Rendering and remote linearized access are not covered here.
Comparison note
Highlights are based on workloads where the compared libraries are performing equivalent work. Some page-access rows are omitted when a library exposes a materially different execution path on the fixture.
Results
Latest verified benchmark snapshots by workload family
ZingPDF fastest in the latest verified rerun.
ZingPDF fastest in the latest verified rerun.
ZingPDF fastest in the latest verified rerun.
PDFsharp fastest in the latest verified rerun.
Snapshot
First-page access, mixed workload
Snapshot
First-page text extraction, text-heavy PDF
Snapshot
Append 10 pages and save
Snapshot
Large merge
Access
Seekable stream access and page lookup
Latest verified benchmark run: 21 Apr 2026.
| Workload | ZingPDF | PDFsharp | PdfPig | iText |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open minimal PDF | 4.860 µs | 11.638 µs | 41.145 µs | 44.779 µs |
| Open larger real-world PDF | 4.989 µs | 5,186.462 µs | 288.183 µs | 15,584.398 µs |
| Open and count pages, larger real-world PDF | 64.854 µs | 5,120.180 µs | 258.164 µs | 15,305.888 µs |
| Open and get first page, mixed workload | 73.901 µs | 953.004 µs | 1,181.713 µs | 2,492.956 µs |
| Open and get middle page, mixed workload | 154.891 µs | 876.371 µs | 1,147.681 µs | 2,539.992 µs |
| Open and get last page, mixed workload | 189.207 µs | 893.967 µs | 1,201.403 µs | 2,406.977 µs |
Extraction
Plain-text extraction across current fixtures
Latest verified benchmark run: 21 Apr 2026.
| Workload | ZingPDF | PdfPig | iText |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open and extract first-page plain text, text-heavy PDF | 38.93 ms | 74.92 ms | 344.36 ms |
| Extract first-page plain text, already-open text-heavy PDF | 30.00 ms | 86.76 ms | 291.02 ms |
| Extract full-document plain text, text-heavy PDF | 313.77 ms | 563.11 ms | 3,571.49 ms |
| Open and extract first-page plain text, small composite-font PDF | 35.13 ms | 76.78 ms | 289.89 ms |
| Extract first-page plain text, already-open small composite-font PDF | 27.61 ms | 99.42 ms | 294.06 ms |
Writes
Append-heavy edits and larger merge saves
Latest verified benchmark run: 21 Apr 2026.
| Workload | ZingPDF | PDFsharp | iText |
|---|---|---|---|
| Append 1 page to mixed-workload PDF and save | 1.733 ms | 3.682 ms | 10.083 ms |
| Append 10 pages to mixed-workload PDF and save | 1.798 ms | 3.567 ms | 11.541 ms |
| Merge text-heavy PDF into mixed-workload PDF and save | 33.970 ms | 30.422 ms | 34.715 ms |