Is PHP 8.5 faster than previous versions?

[00:00] PHP 8.5 was just released last week and

[00:03] naturally you are as curious as I am if

[00:06] it's faster than previous versions of

[00:08] PHP. My colleague Tim set out to test

[00:12] this with a benchmark for PHP 8.4 and

[00:15] comparing a Symfony Laravel and a

[00:17] WordPress demo applications against

[00:19] previous versions of PHP.

[00:22] Can you expect a big performance

[00:24] increase like from PHP 5 to 7 or is

[00:28] there no noticeable increase? In this

[00:30] video, I'm going to discuss our

[00:32] findings. Mo, I am Benjamin and my team

[00:36] and I work on PHP performance 24/7 for

[00:39] the last 10 years, helping thousands of

[00:41] developers along the way. Let's start

[00:43] discussing the benchmark results that

[00:45] Tim collected. You find all of them in

[00:47] our blog post. The link is in the

[00:49] description. First, the setup is always

[00:52] important. Uh the blog post lists

[00:54] everything that went into this

[00:56] benchmark. So, first you will find all

[00:58] the code that we use for infrastructure

[01:00] provisioning and the demo applications.

[01:03] We used a Hetsa machine with eight

[01:05] dedicated virtual cores. We are using uh

[01:08] the Debian 13 Trixie release uh for a

[01:12] database MySQL or SQLite depending on

[01:14] the demo. And the uh one important

[01:17] factor is for PHP we used um the suri um

[01:22] packages built for Debian um including

[01:26] PHP 8.5 release candidate number three

[01:30] for the PHP setup we didn't change a lot

[01:34] uh the JIT is not enabled and uh PHP FPM

[01:37] is configured with a static pool of 17

[01:40] workers.

[01:42] The for the project versions we have

[01:44] Laravel version 12, Symphfony 7.3,

[01:47] WordPress 6.8 and we used Va for um uh

[01:51] doing performing the benchmark testing.

[01:53] As for our methodology, what we ran here

[01:56] is two different kinds of benchmarks. So

[01:59] we tested with a fixed request per

[02:02] second number so that we can focus on

[02:04] the response time of PHP um with this

[02:07] fixed number of requests. And the second

[02:10] test we did is with a fixed level of

[02:12] concurrency to focus on the sort of

[02:16] throughput. How many requests per second

[02:19] did we achieve by running this fixed

[02:21] level of concurrency. Uh both tests run

[02:24] for about 60 seconds or for 60 seconds

[02:27] and then we compile these numbers and uh

[02:30] generate charts from them.

[02:33] We try to make the test setup as simple

[02:36] as possible because we usually expect

[02:38] that you don't reconfigure PHP too um

[02:43] broadly. So what we didn't want to test

[02:46] is um PHP versions that are

[02:49] self-compiled or um use very complex

[02:53] setup of the demo applications or PHP

[02:55] itself because from experience

[02:58] um 95% of you will be running PHP on um

[03:02] more vanilla uh configurations the

[03:05] default configurations.

[03:07] So um we wanted to replicate this kind

[03:10] of running PHP. Let's go through the

[03:12] results one by one. We are starting with

[03:15] Symfony and we are looking at the test

[03:18] scenario where we run 100 requests per

[03:21] second a fixed number of requests every

[03:23] second and then we are looking at uh the

[03:26] response times that we see from the uh

[03:28] demo application. So for a symfony

[03:31] application we can see across versions

[03:34] PHP 8.2 2 to 8.5 that the response times

[03:39] are slightly slower for PHP 8.5 compared

[03:43] to 8.2 or 8.3 for example in the mean.

[03:47] Uh also like super slightly slower in

[03:51] the median 95 percentile and 99

[03:54] percentile.

[03:56] This is not statistically

[03:59] uh significant. So um it is within the

[04:02] margin of error. um the numbers could

[04:05] statistically be the same. So there's

[04:08] really no difference in the performance

[04:10] between these versions if we um perform

[04:13] this kind of test where we run a fixed

[04:15] number of requests um against the

[04:17] Symfony application every second. For

[04:19] the second test for Symfony uh running

[04:22] 15 concurrent users to find out how many

[04:24] requests is the application being able

[04:27] to process in a fixed time frame. we see

[04:30] there um across all PHP versions it's

[04:33] around 500 requests and uh again it's

[04:36] within the margin of error so um it's

[04:39] not clear which version here is faster

[04:41] or not they all seem to be equally fast

[04:44] same for the Laravel case uh first for

[04:47] the test with 100 requests per second uh

[04:51] testing the response time we can see uh

[04:54] in the mean median 95 and 99 percentile

[04:58] are roughly the same there seems to be

[05:00] one outlier for PHP 8.3 in the 99th

[05:03] percentile but this is also not very big

[05:07] and um selfcorrected itself in the next

[05:10] so in PHP 8.3 so in general again here I

[05:14] would say the performance for PHP 8.5 is

[05:17] the same than the previous versions 82

[05:20] to 8.4 for for Laravel case with the

[05:24] scenario of 15 concurrent users making

[05:27] as many requests as possible in 60

[05:29] seconds. We can also see here around 850

[05:33] requests for this Laravel demo

[05:35] application and it's the same uh

[05:37] regardless of the PHP version. So again

[05:40] it doesn't seem to be that PHP 8.5 is

[05:43] generally faster than previous versions.

[05:46] As a third case, we've took WordPress um

[05:49] specifically also because it's possible

[05:52] to run WordPress still with PHP 7.4. So

[05:56] here we can test is there a performance

[05:58] difference between PHP 7.4 and all the

[06:02] PHP 8 versions including 8.5. And for

[06:05] the test with 100 requests per second,

[06:08] we can see the performance is not really

[06:12] um very different between these

[06:14] versions. um there is within the margin

[06:18] of error no real um improvement between

[06:21] all these versions.

[06:24] So we can conclude that PHP 8.5 is also

[06:28] not faster for WordPress applications

[06:31] compared to previous versions. For a

[06:33] test with 15 concurrent users with

[06:35] WordPress, we this is the only case

[06:37] where we can see a small difference that

[06:41] there um is outside of the margin of

[06:43] error. So we can see for PHP 8.3 4 and 5

[06:48] the number of requests that we can uh

[06:51] achieve in a fixed time frame is a

[06:54] little bit larger than for PHP 7.4. So

[06:57] um there is this difference between PHP

[07:00] 8 and PHP 7. But again PHP 8.5 is not um

[07:06] be able to handle more requests per uh

[07:10] time frame than PHP 8.4 or 8.3.

[07:14] What do these results mean in general?

[07:16] Uh so we found out PHP 8.5 is not faster

[07:21] than PHP 8.4 or previous versions than

[07:24] PHP. So uh the result that we already

[07:28] saw last year when we benchmark PHP 8.4

[07:31] is still true. PHP is at a very high

[07:35] level of performance for a dynamics

[07:37] language and achieving general

[07:40] improvements is really hard at that

[07:42] point. Uh to achieve changes you

[07:46] actually need to look at the application

[07:48] and runtime level of PHP. What you can

[07:52] obviously do is check the performance of

[07:55] your PHP application in uh specifically

[07:58] are there SQL queries that are slow? Are

[08:01] you using APIs the wrong way? Maybe

[08:03] there are more modern APIs in PHP now

[08:06] that you that weren't available

[08:08] previously.

[08:10] Uh we published a blog post on

[08:12] improvements in PHP 8.5 that will

[08:15] significantly improve the performance of

[08:18] specific use cases. But uh you need to

[08:21] find if you are actually using PHP and

[08:24] using these APIs and are benefiting uh

[08:27] from them. One thing I want to note here

[08:31] is for example the persistent storage of

[08:34] curl state across um requests. Uh this

[08:38] uh will allow applications that talk to

[08:41] third party APIs to um improve the

[08:44] performance quite significantly with

[08:46] 8.5.

[08:48] You can find a blog post in the

[08:49] description uh on this um on on the

[08:53] specific PHP 8.5 performance changes.

[08:57] A second change that is possible is uh

[09:00] to rearchitect the way you are using

[09:02] PHP. You can for example use franken PHP

[09:05] or any other application server in PHP

[09:08] to um save time bootstrapping PHP and

[09:12] reuse state across requests. You can um

[09:16] move processing out to the background

[09:18] jobs using message cues and other um

[09:21] patterns that allow you to reduce the

[09:24] time spent in the web server. So what is

[09:27] really possible to make a difference in

[09:30] application performance is in your

[09:33] hands. You are um driving this change by

[09:37] building your application in a way that

[09:39] ends up being faster for users. If you

[09:41] like my content on PHP performance, you

[09:44] can uh continue with this uh video on

[09:47] PHP 8.5 changes in performance or you

[09:50] can follow this channel or subscribe to

[09:52] our newsletter link is in the

[09:54] description. Bye.