PHP 8 Performance Benchmark Report by Phoronix

Foreign technology media Phoronix released a performance benchmark report for PHP 8. Since PHP 8 Alpha 1 is not expected until mid‑June, Phoronix built a test version from the latest PHP 8 Git code (as of the end of May). PHP 8’s major new features include a JIT compiler, static return types, union types 2.0, and attributes.

The reference versions used for comparison were PHP 7.4.6, 7.3.18, 7.2.31, 7.1.33, 7.0.33, 5.6.39, 5.5.38, 5.4.44, and PHP 8 with JIT enabled. All tested versions were built on the same system with identical compilers and PHP configuration files.

The test results, shown in the following images, indicate that moving from PHP 7.4 stable to PHP 8 yields a modest ~7% performance improvement, but enabling JIT in PHP 8 produces a striking ~92% boost over PHP 7.4 stable. Compared to the very old PHP 5.4, PHP 8 with JIT is about five times faster.

Micro‑benchmark tests using PHP’s built‑in tests show PHP 8.0 is slightly faster than the already fast PHP 7.4, and with JIT enabled its speed dominates the field.

When running Phoronix Test Suite Self Tests, PHP 8’s performance, whether JIT is enabled or not, does not differ significantly from PHP 7 due to I/O bottlenecks, resulting in limited overall gains.

In rendering and merging tests, JIT‑enabled PHP 8 shows no clear advantage, yet it still outperforms the very old PHP 5 series markedly.

The aggregated scores indicate PHP 8.0 runs about three times faster than PHP 5.4‑5.6, and with JIT enabled the gap widens to roughly four times.

Overall, the data suggest PHP 8.0 is a highly promising release, offering notable performance improvements and new language features.