If you're not using some of the more advanced features of TT, perhaps you can switch to a lighter-weight Templating engine? We use HTML::Template, and it does the job for us. Obviously it has a lot less features. I can't guarantee that it's faster, though. Perhaps you can determine what features you MUST-HAVE in your templating system, then install all the ones that meet your needs, and do a comparison of their performance? If you do this, report your findings, since I'm sure others would be interested in the results.