Benchmarking Nginx and Apache Static File Performance on Windows

(nginx 1.27.5 vs apache 2.4.63, hey load testing, includes raw data and analysis)

Background & Motivation

The vast majority of Nginx and Apache performance evaluations are conducted on Linux. The Nginx official documentation has clearly stated that its Windows release is always in beta, and high performance and scalability should not be expected. In practice, real-world high concurrency benchmarks for Nginx on Windows are extremely rare.

This article uses the hey load testing tool to measure and compare the high-concurrency static file performance of Nginx 1.27.5 and Apache 2.4.63 on a Tencent Cloud lightweight instance (2 cores, 2.6GHz, 2GB RAM, Windows), filling this gap.

Test Environment

• Server: Tencent Cloud Lightweight Server, 2 cores @ 2.6GHz, 2GB RAM
• Operating System: Windows
• Nginx Version: 1.27.5
• Apache Version: 2.4.63
• Static Resource: Local static image /static/tomato.png (71,882 bytes per request)
• Load Tool: hey for Windows
• Load Parameters: 400 concurrent connections, 30,000 total requests
• Test Command: hey_windows_amd64.exe -c 400 -n 30000 http://127.0.0.1/static/tomato.png

Raw Test Data

Apache 2.4.63 Test Results

Summary:
  Total:        19.2283 secs
  Slowest:      18.6432 secs
  Fastest:      0.0004 secs
  Average:      0.1415 secs
  Requests/sec: 1560.2004

  Total data:   2156460000 bytes
  Size/request: 71882 bytes

Response time histogram:
  0.000 [1]     |
  1.865 [29746] |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
  3.729 [1]     |
  5.593 [5]     |
  7.458 [0]     |
  9.322 [19]    |
  11.186 [132]  |
  13.050 [3]    |
  14.915 [39]   |
  16.779 [4]    |
  18.643 [50]   |


Latency distribution:
  10% in 0.0011 secs
  25% in 0.0046 secs
  50% in 0.0328 secs
  75% in 0.0552 secs
  90% in 0.0774 secs
  95% in 0.1396 secs
  99% in 0.4220 secs

Details (average, fastest, slowest):
  DNS+dialup:   0.0008 secs, 0.0004 secs, 18.6432 secs
  DNS-lookup:   0.0000 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.0000 secs
  req write:    0.0003 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.3439 secs
  resp wait:    0.1348 secs, 0.0004 secs, 18.6431 secs
  resp read:    0.0046 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.3162 secs

Status code distribution:
  [200] 30000 responses

Nginx 1.27.5 Test Results

Summary:
  Total:        14.0290 secs
  Slowest:      0.3516 secs
  Fastest:      0.1592 secs
  Average:      0.1808 secs
  Requests/sec: 2138.4308

  Total data:   2156460000 bytes
  Size/request: 71882 bytes

Response time histogram:
  0.159 [1]     |
  0.178 [15472] |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
  0.198 [12350] |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
  0.217 [1556]  |■■■■
  0.236 [394]   |■
  0.255 [122]   |
  0.275 [61]    |
  0.294 [6]     |
  0.313 [1]     |
  0.332 [19]    |
  0.352 [18]    |


Latency distribution:
  10% in 0.1678 secs
  25% in 0.1715 secs
  50% in 0.1779 secs
  75% in 0.1859 secs
  90% in 0.1934 secs
  95% in 0.2082 secs
  99% in 0.2329 secs

Details (average, fastest, slowest):
  DNS+dialup:   0.0007 secs, 0.1592 secs, 0.3516 secs
  DNS-lookup:   0.0000 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.0000 secs
  req write:    0.0001 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.0522 secs
  resp wait:    0.0180 secs, 0.0003 secs, 0.0890 secs
  resp read:    0.1619 secs, 0.0831 secs, 0.2194 secs

Status code distribution:
  [200] 30000 responses

Metrics Comparison & Analysis

Key Findings

• Higher Throughput: Nginx achieved 2138 QPS, 37% higher than Apache (possibly due to its more uniform response time).
• Long-tail Responses: Apache had a few extremely slow requests, which increased the maximum latency. In contrast, Nginx’s response time distribution was extremely tight and showed no significant long-tail delays.
• Response Time Distribution:
• With Apache, nearly all requests were extremely quick (99% under 0.42s), but there were some outliers (>10s, likely due to process/thread pool or IO contention).
• With Nginx, almost all responses were concentrated between 0.16 and 0.23s—very consistent, with very few outliers.
• Stability: Both servers processed all requests without errors in this round of testing.

Confirming Nginx's Official "Windows High Performance and Scalability Should Not Be Expected" Statement

• Nginx official documentation: “high performance and scalability should not be expected, version of nginx for Windows is considered to be a beta version.”
• This benchmark demonstrates that, for short-duration high-concurrency static file workloads, Nginx performed surprisingly well—even surpassing Apache in throughput—with more uniform response times.

This article further conducts cross-validation using both ab and hey testing tools, arriving at consistent conclusions.

c:\Apache24\bin>ab.exe -c 400 -n 30000 http://127.0.0.1/static/tomato.png
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1923142 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 127.0.0.1 (be patient)
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 6000 requests
...
Completed 30000 requests
Finished 30000 requests

Server Software:        nginx/1.27.5
Server Hostname:        127.0.0.1
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /static/tomato.png
Document Length:        71882 bytes

Concurrency Level:      400
Time taken for tests:   13.537 seconds
Complete requests:      30000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      2163570000 bytes
HTML transferred:       2156460000 bytes
Requests per second:    2216.11 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       180.496 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.451 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          156078.10 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   1.4      0      16
Processing:   160  179  11.0    174     253
Waiting:        0    6  10.0      0      80
Total:        160  179  11.1    174     253

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%    174
  66%    177
  75%    183
  80%    188
  90%    189
  95%    194
  98%    218
  99%    231
 100%    253 (longest request)

c:\Apache24\bin>ab.exe -c 400 -n 30000 http://127.0.0.1/static/tomato.png
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1923142 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 127.0.0.1 (be patient)
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 6000 requests
...
Completed 30000 requests
Finished 30000 requests

Server Software:        Apache/2.4.63
Server Hostname:        127.0.0.1
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /static/tomato.png
Document Length:        71882 bytes

Concurrency Level:      400
Time taken for tests:   18.277 seconds
Complete requests:      30000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      2171160000 bytes
HTML transferred:       2156460000 bytes
Requests per second:    1641.42 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       243.691 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.609 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          116008.67 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   1.5      0      35
Processing:    51  242  54.0    222     878
Waiting:       16  230  61.9    211     878
Total:         51  243  54.0    222     878

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%    222
  66%    250
  75%    268
  80%    282
  90%    330
  95%    348
  98%    372
  99%    408
 100%    878 (longest request)