diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 31d08445..f17dadab 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -50,6 +50,12 @@ unicode-width = "0.1"
 anyhow = "1.0.71"
 rand = "0.8"
 argh = "0.1"
+criterion = { version = "0.5", features = ["html_reports"] }
+fakeit = "1.1"
+
+[[bench]]
+name = "paragraph"
+harness = false
 
 [[example]]
 name = "barchart"
diff --git a/benches/paragraph.rs b/benches/paragraph.rs
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..ad3309b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/benches/paragraph.rs
@@ -0,0 +1,165 @@
+use criterion::{
+    black_box, criterion_group, criterion_main, measurement::WallTime, Bencher, BenchmarkGroup,
+    BenchmarkId, Criterion,
+};
+use ratatui::{
+    buffer::Buffer,
+    layout::Rect,
+    widgets::{Paragraph, Widget, Wrap},
+};
+
+/// because the scroll offset is a u16, the maximum number of lines that can be scrolled is 65535.
+/// This is a limitation of the current implementation and may be fixed by changing the type of the
+/// scroll offset to a u32.
+const MAX_SCROLL_OFFSET: u16 = u16::MAX;
+
+/// Benchmark for rendering a paragraph with a given number of lines. The design of this benchmark
+/// allows comparison of the performance of rendering a paragraph with different numbers of lines.
+/// as well as comparing with the various settings on the scroll and wrap features.
+pub fn paragraph(c: &mut Criterion) {
+    let mut group = c.benchmark_group("paragraph");
+    for &line_count in [10, 100, 1000, 10000, MAX_SCROLL_OFFSET].iter() {
+        let lines = random_lines(line_count);
+        let lines = lines.as_str();
+
+        bench_paragraph_new(&mut group, line_count, lines);
+        bench_paragraph_render(&mut group, line_count, lines);
+        bench_paragraph_render_scroll(&mut group, line_count, lines);
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap(&mut group, line_count, lines);
+    }
+    group.finish();
+}
+
+/// baseline benchmark that helps measure the overhead of creating a paragraph
+fn bench_paragraph_new(group: &mut BenchmarkGroup<'_, WallTime>, line_count: u16, lines: &str) {
+    group.bench_with_input(BenchmarkId::new("new", line_count), lines, |b, lines| {
+        b.iter(|| Paragraph::new(black_box(lines)))
+    });
+}
+
+/// benchmark for rendering a paragraph without any scrolling or wrapping
+fn bench_paragraph_render(group: &mut BenchmarkGroup<'_, WallTime>, line_count: u16, lines: &str) {
+    let mut buffer = Buffer::empty(Rect::new(0, 0, 200, 50));
+
+    group.bench_with_input(BenchmarkId::new("render", line_count), lines, |b, lines| {
+        b.iter(|| {
+            let paragraph = Paragraph::new(lines);
+            paragraph.render(buffer.area, &mut buffer);
+        })
+    });
+}
+
+fn bench_paragraph_render_scroll(
+    group: &mut BenchmarkGroup<'_, WallTime>,
+    line_count: u16,
+    lines: &str,
+) {
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("scroll_0", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_scroll_offset(0),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("scroll_1", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_scroll_offset(0),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("scroll_half", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_scroll_offset(line_count / 2),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("scroll_full", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_scroll_offset(line_count),
+    );
+}
+
+fn bench_paragraph_render_scroll_offset(offset: u16) -> impl Fn(&mut Bencher<'_>, &str) {
+    move |b, lines| {
+        let offset = (0u16, offset);
+        let mut buffer = Buffer::empty(Rect::new(0, 0, 200, 50));
+        b.iter(|| {
+            let paragraph = Paragraph::new(lines).scroll(offset);
+            paragraph.render(buffer.area, &mut buffer);
+        })
+    }
+}
+
+fn bench_paragraph_render_wrap(
+    group: &mut BenchmarkGroup<'_, WallTime>,
+    line_count: u16,
+    lines: &str,
+) {
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("wrap_no_trim_100", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap_no_trim(100),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("wrap_no_trim_200", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap_no_trim(200),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("wrap_no_trim_300", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap_no_trim(300),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("wrap_trim_100", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap_trim(100),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("wrap_trim_200", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap_trim(200),
+    );
+    group.bench_with_input(
+        BenchmarkId::new("wrap_trim_300", line_count),
+        lines,
+        bench_paragraph_render_wrap_trim(300),
+    );
+}
+
+/// benchmark for rendering a paragraph with a given wrap width
+fn bench_paragraph_render_wrap_no_trim(width: u16) -> impl Fn(&mut Bencher<'_>, &str) {
+    move |b, lines| {
+        let mut buffer = Buffer::empty(Rect::new(0, 0, width, 50));
+        let wrap = Wrap { trim: false };
+        b.iter(|| {
+            Paragraph::new(black_box(lines))
+                .wrap(black_box(wrap))
+                .render(buffer.area, &mut buffer)
+        })
+    }
+}
+
+/// benchmark for rendering a paragraph with a given wrap width
+fn bench_paragraph_render_wrap_trim(width: u16) -> impl Fn(&mut Bencher<'_>, &str) {
+    move |b, lines| {
+        let mut buffer = Buffer::empty(Rect::new(0, 0, width, 50));
+        let wrap = Wrap { trim: true };
+        b.iter(|| {
+            Paragraph::new(black_box(lines))
+                .wrap(black_box(wrap))
+                .render(buffer.area, &mut buffer)
+        })
+    }
+}
+
+/// Create a string with the given number of lines filled with nonsense words
+///
+/// English language has about 5.1 average characters per word so including the space between words
+/// this should emit around 200 characters per paragraph on average.
+fn random_lines(count: u16) -> String {
+    let count = count as i64;
+    let sentence_count = 3;
+    let word_count = 11;
+    fakeit::words::paragraph(count, sentence_count, word_count, "\n".into())
+}
+
+criterion_group!(benches, paragraph);
+criterion_main!(benches);
diff --git a/deny.toml b/deny.toml
index 82342741..900e3db9 100644
--- a/deny.toml
+++ b/deny.toml
@@ -5,7 +5,14 @@ default = "deny"
 unlicensed = "deny"
 copyleft = "deny"
 confidence-threshold = 0.8
-allow = ["Apache-2.0", "BSD-3-Clause", "MIT", "Unicode-DFS-2016", "WTFPL"]
+allow = [
+    "Apache-2.0",
+    "BSD-2-Clause",
+    "BSD-3-Clause",
+    "ISC",
+    "MIT",
+    "Unicode-DFS-2016",
+]
 
 [advisories]
 unmaintained = "deny"