Blog

The BenchBox blog features benchmarking insights, performance analysis, and updates about the project.

Recent Posts

October 07, 2026 - A ‘spezial’ new look for the benchbox project

benchbox has a new logo and updated burgundy color scheme inspired by a certain shoe

September 15, 2026 - Introducing the BenchBox Results Explorer

A Geekbench for data platform benchmarks

August 31, 2026 - BenchBox v0.4.0: new org, DuckLake, and result provenance

TL;DR: BenchBox now lives at BenchBox-dev/BenchBox. Published results can record who ran them and who paid, including a new vendor-supplied trust label, and the Results Explorer preview at benchbox.dev/results/ displays those fields. DuckLake lands as a beta platform. The bare clickhouse alias and the databricks-connect extra are gone; Throughput@Size figures from earlier releases need a rerun, not a re-export.

May 18, 2026 - Splitting approximate analytics across BenchBox read and write benchmarks

Approximate aggregates answer one query over raw rows. Sketches store compact summary state that can be merged and queried later. BenchBox now tests those workloads separately.

May 18, 2026 - Reworking JoinOrder around the IMDb 2013 dataset

The Join Order Benchmark evaluates query optimizers against the skewed, correlated distributions in the IMDb 2013 dataset. BenchBox v0.3.0 updates joinorder so its data contract reflects that benchmark target.

May 18, 2026 - BenchBox v0.3.0: JoinOrder fix, approximate analytics, and agent prompt composer

TL;DR: The new /prompts/ page composes benchmarking instructions for coding agents. joinorder now uses the real IMDb 2013 Join Order Benchmark dataset at scale factor 1, replacing synthetic data. BenchBox also expands approximate-aggregate and sketch-lifecycle coverage in the primitives benchmarks.

April 26, 2026 - One SF, one gigabyte: harmonizing scale factors across BenchBox

Before v0.2.1, --scale 1 could mean 96 MB or 6 GB depending on which benchmark you ran.

April 26, 2026 - BenchBox v0.2.1: 6 platforms, harmonized scale factors

v0.2.1 is an expansion release: Six new platform adapters. Two new benchmarks.

April 01, 2026 - BenchBox v0.2.0: Alpha to Beta

BenchBox v0.2.0 moves the project to Beta by pairing a higher release-quality bar with broader cloud-platform hardening.

March 10, 2026 - Extracting textcharts from BenchBox exposed hidden coupling

When we pulled BenchBox’s ASCII charts into textcharts, one lazy import and a benchmark-shaped API turned out to be the hard part.

March 10, 2026 - BenchBox v0.1.5: release summary

BenchBox v0.1.5 was released on March 10, 2026.

March 03, 2026 - DuckDB tpch Extension vs BenchBox TPC-H

Same benchmark name, different contract: fast in-engine checks vs full benchmark workflow control.

March 03, 2026 - BenchBox v0.1.4: release summary

BenchBox v0.1.4 was released on March 3, 2026.

February 23, 2026 - BenchBox v0.1.3: release summary

BenchBox v0.1.3 was released on February 23, 2026.

February 15, 2026 - Why we deleted Plotly and wrote our own ASCII charts

Benchmark charts should arrive where you’re already working, not in a file you have to go find.

February 15, 2026 - BenchBox v0.1.2: release summary

BenchBox v0.1.2 was released on February 14, 2026.

January 22, 2026 - Welcome to the BenchBox Blog

Your source for benchmarking insights, methodology deep dives, and honest performance analysis.

Archives

Browse by:

  • Archive - Posts organized by year
  • Tags - Posts organized by topic
  • Authors - Posts organized by author