Measuring the execution time of Python scripts

Measuring the execution time of Python scripts and applications is essential for identifying performance bottlenecks, optimizing code, and determining the average execution time of scripts.

In this post, we will cover a simple way to measure execution time in the Python programming language without installing any additional libraries.

The block below shows an example of Python code:

import time
from datetime import datetime

start = datetime.now()
print(f"##### START [{start:%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S}] #####")

# script code
print("\nScript...\n")

# wait for 5 seconds
time.sleep(5)

end = datetime.now()
print(f"Execution time: {(end - start).total_seconds():.2f} seconds")
print(f"##### END [{end:%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S}] #####")

The result of running the script with its execution time:

In this example, the difference between the timestamps recorded with datetime.now() measures the elapsed time. The time module is used only to simulate a five-second delay.