The time is overwhelmingly the cost of conversion to CPython objects, 95-99% of the total time. The actual document parsing to tape is always much faster than r

The time is overwhelmingly the cost of conversion to CPython objects, 95-99% of the total time. The actual document parsing to tape is always much faster than rapidjson. No CPython JSON library can get away from this overhead. You see a real benefit when you don't need or want the entire document, and can use the JSON pointer or proxy object interface.