Speed implications of using Redirect vs RewriteRule

Question

I'm curious to know if there is any difference in speed between RewriteRules and Redirect within a .htaccess rule on Apache.

To my mind, RewriteRules can often be complex regex expressions which I assume have overhead (even if it's incredibly small) compared to Redirect that would be simple string matching(?)

So, if I had:

RewriteRule ^mytestpage\.html$ http://www.google.com [R=301, QSA]

vs

Redirect 301 /mytestpage\.html http://www.google.com/

I'm probably never going to notice a difference, but what if I had 1000 unique redirects? or 10,000? Would it be adventagous to use one over the other?

Answer 1

The speed implications of using either is negligible and you won't notice a difference. That being said, you should use the right tool for the job.

Doing a simple redirect, you should use a Redirect instead of using Mod_Rewrite. That example is something a Redirect should take care of. When you need to start doing more complex things you can think about using Mod_Rewrite.

Even with 1000 or 10,000 redirects you're not really going to notice a big difference. However it will use more RAM. Probably a few MB's if that.

So to answer your question, it really wont have a real impact but use the right tool for the job.

This should help.

When not to use mod_rewrite