As you can see in the below source code, BeanUtils.copyProperties internally uses reflection and there's additional internal cache lookup steps as well which is going to add cost wrt performance
private static void copyProperties(Object source, Object target, @Nullable Class<?> editable,
@Nullable String... ignoreProperties) throws BeansException {
Assert.notNull(source, "Source must not be null");
Assert.notNull(target, "Target must not be null");
Class<?> actualEditable = target.getClass();
if (editable != null) {
if (!editable.isInstance(target)) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Target class [" + target.getClass().getName() +
"] not assignable to Editable class [" + editable.getName() + "]");
}
actualEditable = editable;
}
**PropertyDescriptor[] targetPds = getPropertyDescriptors(actualEditable);**
List<String> ignoreList = (ignoreProperties != null ? Arrays.asList(ignoreProperties) : null);
for (PropertyDescriptor targetPd : targetPds) {
Method writeMethod = targetPd.getWriteMethod();
if (writeMethod != null && (ignoreList == null || !ignoreList.contains(targetPd.getName()))) {
PropertyDescriptor sourcePd = getPropertyDescriptor(source.getClass(), targetPd.getName());
if (sourcePd != null) {
Method readMethod = sourcePd.getReadMethod();
if (readMethod != null &&
ClassUtils.isAssignable(writeMethod.getParameterTypes()[0], readMethod.getReturnType())) {
try {
if (!Modifier.isPublic(readMethod.getDeclaringClass().getModifiers())) {
readMethod.setAccessible(true);
}
Object value = readMethod.invoke(source);
if (!Modifier.isPublic(writeMethod.getDeclaringClass().getModifiers())) {
writeMethod.setAccessible(true);
}
writeMethod.invoke(target, value);
}
catch (Throwable ex) {
throw new FatalBeanException(
"Could not copy property '" + targetPd.getName() + "' from source to target", ex);
}
}
}
}
}
}
So it's better to use plain setters given the cost reflection