Is Linq to SQL faster than Linq to Entities?

Question

I was having a discussion with a colleague of mine. We use Linq to Sql at work and I am kind of new at the job so I asked him why we are not using Linq to Entities? He made a few arguments and one of them was "Because Linq to Entities is slower than linq to Sql". I'm kinda skeptical about this, I do know that Linq to Entities is more complex and has additional features but I don't see why it is slower.

Is Linq to Entities slower? What would be a good response to such an argument?

**It depends!** - as always :-) Linq-to-SQL is a pretty simplistic one-layer mapping - a table becomes a class in .NET. Entity Framework is much more sophisticated, you can map multiple tables to a single class. So for easy scenarios: yes, Linq-to-SQL is bound to be a tad quicker. **BUT:** EF (at least in v4) allows very nice integration of stored procedures, which can again boost your performance quite a bit - L2S is a bit messy and clunky with sprocs... so that might be a plus for EF4 again.... — marc_s, Nov 15 '11 at 22:02
ALso, I believe the SQL generated by EF4 is often a bit more "mature" and might be a tad faster than certain SQL statements generated by Linq-to-SQL. But differences will probably be rather rare and happen only in specific use cases..... — marc_s, Nov 15 '11 at 22:03

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 15 '11 at 22:02

5

This is likely due to performance issues in early versions of the Entity Framework.

In earlier releases, there were quite a few issues with queries that would translate poorly in Entity Framework. The later releases addressed many of these issues, so now I would argue that it is likely as or better performance wise.

That being said, it really depends on what you're testing - benchmarks and profiling are the only way to tell. Linq To SQL will be faster for certain operations - but EF will also be faster on others. That being said, EF now allows many more opportunities to work around limitations and problems, so is likely more tunable over time.

answered Nov 15 '11 at 22:02

Reed Copsey

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@Steven While I agree that's a very good reason not to choose it for new development, it doesn't really have an impact on its performance ;) – Reed Copsey Nov 15 '11 at 22:08
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+1. It's also worth noting that the next version of Entity Framework promises to automatically cache queries, which will likely give it a significant performance boost over both its current version and LINQ to SQL. – StriplingWarrior Nov 15 '11 at 22:08

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 15 '11 at 22:11

In term of pure performance LINq To SQL should be slightly Faster because it uses a single layer of mapping while Linq to Entities have two layer of mappings and the additional mapping could have performance costs.

However you should do some benchmark in your own context of utilization because the performance differences could be neither noticed most of the times...

Is Linq to SQL faster than Linq to Entities?

2 Answers2