Recursion has more expressive power than iterative looping constructs. I say this because a while loop is equivalent to a tail recursive function and recursive functions need not be tail recursive.

Recursion and while loops are user language constructs. Therefore, from a performance perspective, doesn't it all depend on how a compiler translates the code into machine language in the end?

AWS recently announced a recursion control feature in AWS Lambda that detects and stops Lambda functions running in a recursive or infinite loop.

AWS recently announced a recursion control feature in AWS Lambda that detects and stops Lambda functions running in a recursive or infinite loop.