[corecoder]

A one or two orders of magnitude greater speed, lots of configurations for caching policies, the ability to split a request in several subrequests (ESI) and some other nice things.

[omn1]

Not sure if the performance gains are still valid. There's reports that state the contrary: https://deliciousbrains.com/page-caching-varnish-vs-nginx-fa... Nginx has something similar to ESI called SSI (http://serverfault.com/questions/406103/main-differences-bet...)

[fgsch]

There is quite a few places for improvement in that test (e.g. tweaking number of threads in Varnish) and by no means the tests are like for like.

I will take it with a grain of salt or do your own tests, if you really care.

[omn1]

Yes, important point: Always test with your own infrastructure and run your own benchmark. There's nothing replacing own experimentation and experience. What works for one company does not necessarily work for others as well.