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Original Article
WebAssembly as a Universal Cloud Runtime: A Comprehensive Survey and Performance Analysis
Vaibhav Ravindra Ahire1
Dhanashree Amrut Pagar2
1 2 Department of Cloud Technology and Information Security Engineering, Sandip University, Nashik, Maharashtra. India.
Published Online: May-August 2026
Pages: 805-813
Cite this article
No DOIReferences
1. W3C WebAssembly Working Group, "WebAssembly Core Specification, Release 3.0," W3C, 2025. [Online].
Available: https://www.w3.org/TR/wasm-core-3/
2. Bytecode Alliance, "WASI (WebAssembly System Interface) – Preview 3 (0.3.0)," 2026. [Online]. Available: https://wasi.dev
3. Bytecode Alliance, "WebAssembly Component Model Documentation." [Online].
Available: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/component-model
4. Bytecode Alliance, "Wasmtime Runtime Documentation." [Online]. Available: https://wasmtime.dev
5. C. Marcelino, N. Krennmair, T. W. Pusztai, and S. Nastic, "Lumos: Performance Characterization of WebAssembly as a Serverless Runtime
in the Edge-Cloud Continuum," in Proc. 15th Int. Conf. Internet of Things (IOT 2025), Vienna, Austria, Nov. 2025, pp. 1–9. doi:
10.1145/3770501.3770515. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05118
6. S. Kang, M. Song, T. Kim, S. Lee, J. Han, H. Kim, and K. Lee, "HybridServe: Adaptive WebAssembly-Container Runtime Selection for
Edge Serverless Computing," in Proc. 11th Int. Workshop Serverless Computing (WoSC '25), ACM, 2025. doi: 10.1145/3774899.3775011
7. S. Kakati and M. Brorsson, "The Small Container: Lightweight Compute for Multi-architecture Cloud-Edge Systems," SN Computer Science,
vol. 6, no. 8, 2025. doi: 10.1007/s42979-025-04603-z
8. M. Colosi, R. Farahani, L. Lovén, R. Prodan, and M. Villari, "Serverless Everywhere: A Comparative Analysis of WebAssembly Workflows
Across Browser, Edge, and Cloud," in Proc. 1st Int. Workshop on Intelligent and Scalable Systems Across the Computing Continuum
(ScaleSys '25), Vienna, Austria, Nov. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04089
9. V. Besozzi, E. Fiasco, M. Danelutto, and P. Dazzi, "WebAssembly and Unikernels: A Comparative Study for Serverless at the
Edge," arXiv:2509.09400, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09400
10. C. Marcelino, N. Krennmair, T. W. Pusztai, and S. Nastic, "Roadrunner: Accelerating Data Delivery to WebAssembly-Based Serverless
Functions," in Proc. 26th Int. Middleware Conf. (MIDDLEWARE '25), 2025. doi: 10.1145/3721462.3770777. [Online].
Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01888
11. CNCF Contributors, "State of WebAssembly Survey 2025," Cloud Native Computing Foundation, 2025. [Online].
Available: https://www.cncf.io/reports
12. IDC, "PaaS Decision-Maker and Business Value Survey, 2025: Server-Side WebAssembly for Cloud-Native Development," IDC
#US52865225, Mar. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://my.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US52865225
13. HTTP Archive, "WebAssembly Chapter," in Web Almanac 2025, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://almanac.httparchive.org
14. Cloudflare, "Cloudflare Workers Documentation – WebAssembly Support," 2026. [Online].
Available: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers
15. Fastly, "Fastly Compute Documentation," 2026. [Online]. Available: https://docs.fastly.com/products/compute
16. CNCF Sandbox, "SpinKube – WebAssembly on Kubernetes," 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.spinkube.dev
17. CNCF Sandbox, "WasmEdge – Lightweight WebAssembly Runtime." [Online]. Available: https://wasmedge.org
18. S. Hykes, "If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker," Twitter, Mar. 27, 2019. [Online].
Available: https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225
Available: https://www.w3.org/TR/wasm-core-3/
2. Bytecode Alliance, "WASI (WebAssembly System Interface) – Preview 3 (0.3.0)," 2026. [Online]. Available: https://wasi.dev
3. Bytecode Alliance, "WebAssembly Component Model Documentation." [Online].
Available: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/component-model
4. Bytecode Alliance, "Wasmtime Runtime Documentation." [Online]. Available: https://wasmtime.dev
5. C. Marcelino, N. Krennmair, T. W. Pusztai, and S. Nastic, "Lumos: Performance Characterization of WebAssembly as a Serverless Runtime
in the Edge-Cloud Continuum," in Proc. 15th Int. Conf. Internet of Things (IOT 2025), Vienna, Austria, Nov. 2025, pp. 1–9. doi:
10.1145/3770501.3770515. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05118
6. S. Kang, M. Song, T. Kim, S. Lee, J. Han, H. Kim, and K. Lee, "HybridServe: Adaptive WebAssembly-Container Runtime Selection for
Edge Serverless Computing," in Proc. 11th Int. Workshop Serverless Computing (WoSC '25), ACM, 2025. doi: 10.1145/3774899.3775011
7. S. Kakati and M. Brorsson, "The Small Container: Lightweight Compute for Multi-architecture Cloud-Edge Systems," SN Computer Science,
vol. 6, no. 8, 2025. doi: 10.1007/s42979-025-04603-z
8. M. Colosi, R. Farahani, L. Lovén, R. Prodan, and M. Villari, "Serverless Everywhere: A Comparative Analysis of WebAssembly Workflows
Across Browser, Edge, and Cloud," in Proc. 1st Int. Workshop on Intelligent and Scalable Systems Across the Computing Continuum
(ScaleSys '25), Vienna, Austria, Nov. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04089
9. V. Besozzi, E. Fiasco, M. Danelutto, and P. Dazzi, "WebAssembly and Unikernels: A Comparative Study for Serverless at the
Edge," arXiv:2509.09400, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09400
10. C. Marcelino, N. Krennmair, T. W. Pusztai, and S. Nastic, "Roadrunner: Accelerating Data Delivery to WebAssembly-Based Serverless
Functions," in Proc. 26th Int. Middleware Conf. (MIDDLEWARE '25), 2025. doi: 10.1145/3721462.3770777. [Online].
Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01888
11. CNCF Contributors, "State of WebAssembly Survey 2025," Cloud Native Computing Foundation, 2025. [Online].
Available: https://www.cncf.io/reports
12. IDC, "PaaS Decision-Maker and Business Value Survey, 2025: Server-Side WebAssembly for Cloud-Native Development," IDC
#US52865225, Mar. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://my.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US52865225
13. HTTP Archive, "WebAssembly Chapter," in Web Almanac 2025, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://almanac.httparchive.org
14. Cloudflare, "Cloudflare Workers Documentation – WebAssembly Support," 2026. [Online].
Available: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers
15. Fastly, "Fastly Compute Documentation," 2026. [Online]. Available: https://docs.fastly.com/products/compute
16. CNCF Sandbox, "SpinKube – WebAssembly on Kubernetes," 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.spinkube.dev
17. CNCF Sandbox, "WasmEdge – Lightweight WebAssembly Runtime." [Online]. Available: https://wasmedge.org
18. S. Hykes, "If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to create Docker," Twitter, Mar. 27, 2019. [Online].
Available: https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/1111004913222324225
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