Passenger vs Puma

Overview

Passenger

Stacks1.4K

Followers298

Votes199

GitHub Stars5.1K

Forks557

Puma

Stacks1.2K

Followers265

Votes20

GitHub Stars7.8K

Forks1.5K

Passenger vs Puma: What are the differences?

Introduction

In the world of web application deployment, two popular servers stand out: Passenger and Puma. Both are known for their high performance and reliability. However, there are some key differences between the two that are worth exploring. In this article, we will delve into these differences and provide a clear understanding of when to use Passenger and when to opt for Puma.

Concurrency Model: One of the primary differences between Passenger and Puma lies in their concurrency models. Passenger operates on a process-based model, which means each request is handled by a separate process. On the other hand, Puma utilizes a thread-based model, where multiple requests can be handled by a single process through threads. This fundamental distinction has implications for resource utilization and scalability.
Resource Usage: Due to their respective concurrency models, Passenger and Puma exhibit different resource utilization patterns. Passenger tends to be more resource-intensive as each request is handled by a separate process that requires its own resources. On the contrary, Puma's thread-based model allows for higher resource efficiency as multiple requests can be served by a single process with shared resources. This can result in reduced memory consumption and improved server performance.
Scalability: Scalability is a crucial aspect of web application servers. Passenger and Puma differ in their scaling capabilities. Passenger excels in vertical scaling, where additional resources are allocated to handle the increased load on a single server. Puma, on the other hand, is designed for horizontal scaling, enabling multiple processes or servers to work together to handle larger traffic volumes. This provides more flexibility in accommodating growing user demands.
Middleware Support: Middleware plays a significant role in enhancing the functionality of web applications. Passenger and Puma vary in terms of middleware support. Passenger offers a wide range of built-in middlewares, simplifying the integration of various components and services into the application stack. Puma, on the other hand, has a minimalistic middleware stack, providing only essential functionality. While Passenger's extensive middleware support makes it more suitable for complex applications, Puma's lightweight approach may be preferable for simpler use cases.
Ease of Configuration: Setting up and configuring a web server can be a complex task. Passenger and Puma differ in ease of configuration. Passenger provides a more user-friendly configuration experience with intuitive options and extensive documentation. It aims to simplify the process for developers who may not have deep server administration knowledge. Puma, on the other hand, requires a more hands-on approach to configuration, catering to experienced developers who prefer fine-grained control over server settings.
Maturity and Community Support: When evaluating web servers, the maturity of the software and community support are crucial considerations. Passenger has a longer history and a more established user base, making it a reliable choice for many developers. It benefits from a vibrant community that actively contributes to its development and provides support. Puma, while relatively newer, has gained significant popularity and has a growing community. However, it may not have the same level of maturity and extensive ecosystem as Passenger.

In summary, Passenger and Puma differ in their concurrency models, resource usage, scalability, middleware support, ease of configuration, and maturity/community support. Understanding these distinctions is essential in deciding which server is best suited for a specific web application deployment scenario.

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Advice on Passenger, Puma

Mark

Software Developer at Nouveta

Mar 4, 2022

Needs adviceon

Rails

Ruby

Puma

I have an integration service that pulls data from third party systems saves it and returns it to the user of the service. We can pull large data sets with the service and response JSON can go up to 5MB with gzip compression. I currently use Rails 6 and Ruby 2.7.2 and Puma web server. Slow clients tend to prevent other users from accessing the system. Am considering a switch to Unicorn.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Passenger	Puma
Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.	Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 5.1K	GitHub Stars 7.8K
GitHub Forks 557	GitHub Forks 1.5K
Stacks 1.4K	Stacks 1.2K
Followers 298	Followers 265
Votes 199	Votes 20
Pros & Cons
Pros 43 Nginx integration 36 Great for rails 21 Fast web server 19 Free 15 Lightweight Cons 0 Cost (some features require paid/pro)	Pros 4 Free 3 Convenient 3 Easy 2 Consumes less memory than Unicorn 2 Multithreaded Cons 0 Uses `select` (limited client count)
Integrations
NGINX Python Ruby Apache HTTP Server Node.js Meteor	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Passenger, Puma?

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Caddy

Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.

Related Comparisons

Passenger vs Puma: What are the differences?

Introduction

Concurrency Model: One of the primary differences between Passenger and Puma lies in their concurrency models. Passenger operates on a process-based model, which means each request is handled by a separate process. On the other hand, Puma utilizes a thread-based model, where multiple requests can be handled by a single process through threads. This fundamental distinction has implications for resource utilization and scalability.
Resource Usage: Due to their respective concurrency models, Passenger and Puma exhibit different resource utilization patterns. Passenger tends to be more resource-intensive as each request is handled by a separate process that requires its own resources. On the contrary, Puma's thread-based model allows for higher resource efficiency as multiple requests can be served by a single process with shared resources. This can result in reduced memory consumption and improved server performance.
Scalability: Scalability is a crucial aspect of web application servers. Passenger and Puma differ in their scaling capabilities. Passenger excels in vertical scaling, where additional resources are allocated to handle the increased load on a single server. Puma, on the other hand, is designed for horizontal scaling, enabling multiple processes or servers to work together to handle larger traffic volumes. This provides more flexibility in accommodating growing user demands.
Middleware Support: Middleware plays a significant role in enhancing the functionality of web applications. Passenger and Puma vary in terms of middleware support. Passenger offers a wide range of built-in middlewares, simplifying the integration of various components and services into the application stack. Puma, on the other hand, has a minimalistic middleware stack, providing only essential functionality. While Passenger's extensive middleware support makes it more suitable for complex applications, Puma's lightweight approach may be preferable for simpler use cases.
Ease of Configuration: Setting up and configuring a web server can be a complex task. Passenger and Puma differ in ease of configuration. Passenger provides a more user-friendly configuration experience with intuitive options and extensive documentation. It aims to simplify the process for developers who may not have deep server administration knowledge. Puma, on the other hand, requires a more hands-on approach to configuration, catering to experienced developers who prefer fine-grained control over server settings.
Maturity and Community Support: When evaluating web servers, the maturity of the software and community support are crucial considerations. Passenger has a longer history and a more established user base, making it a reliable choice for many developers. It benefits from a vibrant community that actively contributes to its development and provides support. Puma, while relatively newer, has gained significant popularity and has a growing community. However, it may not have the same level of maturity and extensive ecosystem as Passenger.

Passenger vs Puma

Overview

Passenger vs Puma: What are the differences?