Why is lodash.each faster than native forEach?

_.each() is not fully compatible to [].forEach(). See the following example:

var a = ['a0'];
a[3] = 'a3';
_.each(a, console.log); // runs 4 times
a.forEach(console.log); // runs twice -- that's just how [].forEach() is specified

http://jsfiddle.net/BhrT3/

So lodash’s implementation is missing an if (... in ...) check, which might explain the performance difference.

As noted in the comments above, the difference to native for is mainly caused by the additional function lookup in your test. Use this version to get more accurate results:

for (var ix = 0, len = a.length; ix < len; ix++) {
  cb(a[ix]);
}

http://jsperf.com/lo-dash-each-vs-native-foreach/15