Quite often, the efficient usage of computing resources is a great challenge. Performance measurements, comparisons, and the resulting optimizations are a suitable way to accomplish this goal. The BenchIT project provides a framework for performance measurements on UNIX based systems. Our approach combines low requirements on software with a simple interface for measuring kernels and a strict separation of configuration, compiling, measuring and result evaluation. Unlike most other benchmark systems, the BenchIT environment provides functions on several levels: Measurements on verying problem sizes, graphical presentation of the results and the capability to automatically compare to other measurements. Those characteristics and the fact, that there are userfriendly interfaces, which allow access to a database make it easy to compare different algorithms by using BenchIT. The paper will present the BenchIT platform and describe first results on selected machines.