A simple benchmark for comparing the performance of different post-quantum cryptography (PQC) signing algorithms. Written in Rust as a command line tool to ensure it runs on various operating systems.

Three NIST-standardized algorithm families are compared:

• ML-DSA (formerly CRYSTALS-Dilithium): lattice-based, good balance of key size and performance.
• SPHINCS+: stateless hash-based signatures, conservative security, larger signatures.
• Falcon: NTRU-lattice-based, very compact signatures, requires constant-time hardware.

• Rust toolchain ≥ 1.70 (rustup.rs)
• C compiler (for building the underlying C reference implementations via pqcrypto)

AVX2 (x86_64) and aarch64 NEON optimizations are used automatically if the CPU supports them.

cargo build --release
cargo run --release

For each algorithm family a table is printed with the following metrics:

Example output (Apple M3, 10 cycles):

┌────────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│                │  ML-DSA-44 │  ML-DSA-65 │  ML-DSA-87 │
├────────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ Key Gen (ms/op)│      0.027 │      0.040 │      0.054 │
│ Sign (ms/op)   │      0.063 │      0.095 │      0.123 │
│ Verify (ms/op) │      0.021 │      0.031 │      0.041 │
│ Public Key (B) │       1312 │       1952 │       2592 │
│ Secret Key (B) │       2560 │       4032 │       4896 │
│ Signature (B)  │       2420 │       3293 │       4595 │
└────────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Notes:

• ML-DSA-65/87: The signature sizes in pqcrypto v0.18.1 are 3309 and 4627 bytes respectively — the FIPS 204 draft values (3293 / 4595) differ.

• Falcon-padded: The library buffers up to the respective maximum length (666 / 1280 bytes), not to separate, larger fixed values.

• pqcrypto v0.18.1 — Rust bindings to the NIST PQC reference implementations in C
• indicatif v0.18 — progress bars
• cli-table v0.5 — terminal table rendering

MIT license