Docling Speed Experiment Results

Date: 2026-01-03 14:31:43

Summary

Approach	Description	Avg (s/doc)	Target	Status	Speedup
baseline	docling-serve HTTP	2.283	-	-	-
fastapi	FastAPI + SDK singleton	0.685	0.8	PASS	3.3x
subprocess	Persistent subprocess	0.661	1.0	PASS	3.5x

Decision

Phase 0 PASSED - FastAPI approach meets the < 0.8s threshold.

Proceed to Phase 1 implementation:

• Task 1.1: docling_subprocess_worker.py (skipped - FastAPI only)
• Task 1.2: hybrid_server.py (opendataloader-pdf-hybrid CLI)
• Task 2.1: DoclingSubprocessClient.java (skipped - FastAPI only)
• Task 2.2: DoclingFastServerClient.java
• Task 2.3: HybridClientFactory modification
• Task 3: Benchmark integration
• Task 4: Final validation

Subprocess approach also passed - both approaches available for implementation.

Detailed Statistics

Baseline

• Description: docling-serve HTTP API
• Timestamp: 2026-01-03 14:23:41
• Total documents: 200
• Successful: 200
• Failed: 0
• Total elapsed: 456.6s
• Average per doc: 2.2825s
• Min: 2.0045s
• Max: 8.0182s

Fastapi

• Description: FastAPI server with docling SDK singleton
• Timestamp: 2026-01-03 14:27:18
• Total documents: 200
• Successful: 200
• Failed: 0
• Total elapsed: 137.1s
• Average per doc: 0.6855s
• Min: 0.1912s
• Max: 4.2420s

Subprocess

• Description: Persistent Python subprocess with docling SDK
• Timestamp: 2026-01-03 14:30:50
• Total documents: 200
• Successful: 200
• Failed: 0
• Total elapsed: 132.4s
• Average per doc: 0.6612s
• Min: 0.1908s
• Max: 4.2498s