How to run your benchmarks

There are several ways to run your benchmarks. What is important is that BenchmarkDotNet works only with Console Apps. It does not support any other kind of application like ASP.NET, Azure WebJobs, etc.

Types

If you have just a few types with benchmarks, you can use BenchmarkRunner:

var summary = BenchmarkRunner.Run<MyBenchmarkClass>();
var summary = BenchmarkRunner.Run(typeof(MyBenchmarkClass));

The disadvantage of BenchmarkRunner is that it always runs all benchmarks in a given type (or assembly) and to change the type you need to modify the source code. But it's great for a quick start.

BenchmarkSwitcher

If you have more types and you want to choose which benchmark to run (either by using console line arguments or console input) you should use BenchmarkSwitcher:

static void Main(string[] args) => BenchmarkSwitcher.FromAssembly(typeof(Program).Assembly).Run(args);

Also you can use the config command style to specify some config from command line (more @docs.console-args):

dotnet run -c Release -- --job short --runtimes net461 netcoreapp21--filter *BenchmarkClass1*

The most important thing about BenchmarkSwitcher is that you need to pass the args from Main to the Run method. If you don't, it won't parse the arguments.

Url

You can also run a benchmark directly from the internet:

string url = "<E.g. direct link to raw content of a gist>";
var summary = BenchmarkRunner.RunUrl(url);

Note: it works only for Full .NET Framework. It's not recommended to use this approach.

Source

string benchmarkSource = "public class MyBenchmarkClass { ...";
var summary = BenchmarkRunner.RunSource(benchmarkSource);

Note: it works only for Full .NET Framework. It's not recommended to use this approach.