A stable sort is required when the input might contain duplicates (that is, records that have the same values for all the sort fields) and you need the duplicates to appear in the result in the same order as they appeared in the input. When the input contains no duplicates, or when you do not mind what order the duplicates appear in the result, an unstable sort will do.

An unstable sort will normally be slightly faster than the stable version of the same algorithm. However, where the ideal sort algorithm is only available in a stable version, it may often be better than the unstable version of a different algorithm.