The rapid emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has made it surmountable to offer secure communication in devices with limited scopes. Lightweight cryptography is beneficial as it addresses these limitations, ensuring adequate security for devices lacking computing power, memory, or processing capabilities. This paper examines and interrelates different types of lightweight cryptographic algorithms and assesses their performance regarding speed, power consumption and memory usage in IoT devices. Using benchmarks for the most used IoT hardware, we relate performance with efficiency and effects on overall system efficiency including energy and response time. General-purpose cryptographic algorithms such as AES and RSA are used as benchmarks to evince the advantages of lightweight cryptography within the confines within which it is applicable. The findings indicate that there is a wide range for design within lightweight cryptography algorithms, some algorithms are preferred when operating at low energy levels or when rapid processing is required while others tend to be more efficient in terms of memory. Such analysis will provide direction on how to choose an appropriate lightweight cryptography method for the various application needs of the IoT framework enabling development on efficient and secure designs of IoT systems.