Per object overhead in functional languages is usually lower since polymorphism is handled at the function level rather than the data level. You don't have to store class pointers etc, just the raw data and probably a type tag.

I can't find a reference for erlang's representation but I believe it has only a little more overhead than ocaml which is described here - http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/ocaml-internals/

I know I should thank you by up voting. But also, just want to say that the guide was a very interesting and insightful read.

using their official docs

http://erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/advanced.html#9

(I haven't tried this:

    erts_debug:flat_size(dict:new()).

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1964015/erlang-what-is-mo...

Per-object overhead is generally more reasonable.

You can have a whole Erlang process for a price of (roughly) 100 Java objects.