The frustration that started this
In April 2026, I (Atilla) wanted to test a friend's laptop quickly to see if it was worth upgrading. The honest options:
- UserBenchmark.com — community-banned for documented bias toward Intel single-core. r/hardware and r/pcmasterrace filter it out as untrustworthy.
- Geekbench — 500 MB download, requires admin rights, $9.99 for the Pro version with detailed reports.
- Cinebench — 800 MB download, Maxon account required.
- 3DMark — 8 GB download (yes, GB), Steam account, paid for full features.
- PassMark — Windows-only .exe download.
On my friend's locked-down corporate laptop, none of those would install. There was no quick, honest, browser-based alternative. So I built one in 6 hours over a weekend.
What 9bench is
9bench is a browser-based hardware benchmark that measures CPU, GPU, and RAM in 15 seconds. The entire test runs locally in your browser using:
- WebGPU compute shaders for real GPU compute performance
- Web Crypto API for SHA-256 chains (CPU-bound, hardware-accelerated)
- Web Workers for multi-core parallelism
- TypedArrays for RAM bandwidth measurement
No download. No installation. No account. No upload. Read the full methodology for every formula and bracket.
What "Truth Series" means
9bench is part of the Toololis Truth Series — utility tools that surface honest numbers. The series rules:
- Show your work. Methodology is public. Formulas are documented. Sources are cited.
- Cite real research. Lancet meta-analyses, peer-reviewed papers, official guidelines — not Twitter wisdom.
- Sarcastic where useful, helpful where needed. The voice should be friendly, not patronizing.
- No upsells, no fluff. Free where it can be free. Premium only when there's a real cost we have to recover.
- Honest about limits. If a measurement is approximate or constrained by browser APIs, we say so.
Toololis has 668+ Truth Series tools (lifetime calculators, decision matrices, identity tests, attachment style assessments). 9bench is the dedicated hardware-benchmark spinoff.
Who built this
Atilla Kürük — solo software builder, based in Antalya, Turkey.
I build small, useful, honest tools. Past projects include:
- Toololis — 668 honest browser tools (Truth Series, calculators, decisions, identity tests)
- Promptolis — curated prompt library for AI tools
- seoscore.tools — 260-check SEO/AEO/GEO audit scanner
- 9bench (this site) — browser hardware benchmark
Find me at:
How 9bench is funded
Currently: self-funded by me, runs on Cloudflare's free tier (Pages + D1 + Workers). Operating cost is roughly $0 at the current scale (under 100K monthly visits).
Future plans (not yet active):
- Optional B2B API for tech reviewers / IT helpdesks (whitelabel embed for Notebookcheck, Tom's Hardware, etc.)
- Lead-gen partnerships with refurbished-hardware shops (only when relevant; transparent disclosure)
- Possibly a Pro tier with deeper analysis (disk speed, network test, AI inference benchmark) — never pay-walling the core 15-second test
The core benchmark will remain free forever. That's the deal.
Open source
Source code at github.com/atillakuruk/9bench (link active once published). MIT license. Pull requests welcome — especially for additional benchmark methodologies (disk speed via File System Access API, network latency, in-browser ML inference) that are practical to run client-side.
Built with
- Astro 4 — static site generator
- Tailwind CSS — utility-first styling
- Cloudflare Pages — hosting + edge functions
- Cloudflare D1 — SQLite at the edge for global score storage
- workers-og — dynamic OG image generation (satori + resvg-wasm)
- WebGPU + WebAssembly + Web Workers + Web Crypto API — the actual benchmark stack
- Claude (Anthropic) — AI-assisted code generation, paired with my judgment
Get in touch
Bug reports, calibration feedback, partnership ideas, just saying hi — all welcome.
Email [email protected] or open an issue on GitHub.