You need to verify quickly (e.g., cloud storage, backups).

In the battle of , xxHash is the clear winner for almost every modern technical application. It is significantly faster, passes more rigorous randomness tests, and is better suited for high-throughput environments. Unless you are forced to use MD5 by a legacy requirement, xxHash (specifically XXH3 or XXH64) is the superior choice.

MD5 (Message-Digest Algorithm 5) was designed in 1991 by Ronald Rivest. For decades, it was the gold standard for verifying file integrity and storing passwords. 128-bit hash value.