Any general purpose VM is fine, including the VMs behind JavaScript, but just double check that's actually what's being compared instead of inter JavaScript and VM performance. How many times per second you can call 1-5 line functions from a webpage's execution context is comparing the latter and as the article notes at the end:
> definitely don’t go converting all your websites’ JavaScript to WebAssembly! However, that’s not really the aim of WebAssembly. Its aim is to enable richer experiences on the web that require higher performance, for example machine learning, virtual reality, or gaming.
WASM functions aren't meant to replace small JS functions on your standard website. It's meant to be a general purpose VM you can target large amounts of non-webpage code to.
