[libvirt-users] performance tradeoffs/penalty

hi everybody a newbie here, hoping some experienced users/expert can honestly answer this one question, and I think I realize all other advantages libvirtoffer but simply performance, does libvirt make a user pay penalty, even if only a small amount, for using it when compared to raw qemu-kvm command line? if it does where the overhead goes? quest or host, or maybe both? lastly if overall performance is slower then how small it is comparing to all the advantages it offers? many thanks and apologies if this subject was answered already in the past