PHP benchmark

Comprehensive PHP server benchmarking utility. Tests your hosting environment across 15 benchmark modules and reports results in milliseconds.

Auto-detects CLI vs web and renders with the appropriate output mode:

• CLI — ANSI colors with Unicode box-drawing tables
• Web — styled HTML dashboard with responsive CSS grid layout

Each run saves a JSON report with a timestamp to reports/.

Benchmark Modules

Category	Module	What it measures
Environment	PHP	Version, ini settings, memory limits, loaded extensions
I/O	Disk I/O	File creation across 8 block sizes (512B–64KB)
	File Read	Sequential reads across file sizes (1KB–4MB)
	Network	DNS resolution and TCP connection latency
Compute	CPU	Math functions, string operations, loops, conditionals
	Memory	Allocation speed and peak memory per operation
	Regex	preg_match and preg_replace across 10 pattern types
	JSON	Encode/decode with small, medium, and large payloads
	Serialization	serialize vs json_encode vs var_export (+ igbinary/msgpack if available)
	Hashing	md5, sha1, sha256, sha512, xxh3, crc32, hmac-sha256, bcrypt, argon2id
	Encryption	AES-128/256-CBC/GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305 encrypt and decrypt
	Compression	gzip, zlib, deflate (+ brotli/lzf if available) with compression ratios
Runtime	Function Overhead	Named function, closure, first-class callable, static/instance method, arrow function
	Type Casting	int/string/float/bool conversions
	Object Instantiation	stdClass, DateTime, SplStack, SplPriorityQueue, ArrayObject
Database	MySQL	Query performance (requires ext-mysqli)

All modules can be individually enabled/disabled and configured in config/config.yml.

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.4
• ext-mysqli (for MySQL benchmarks, optional)

Installation

composer create-project hyperized/benchmark
cp config/config.yml.example config/config.yml

Adjust config/config.yml to your preferences. Set module toggles, cycle counts, MySQL credentials, and optionally override the output format.

Usage

CLI

php benchmark.php

Example output:

╔════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  PHP Benchmark Report                          ║
║  2026-04-11 14:30:22                           ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

── PHP ───────────────────────────────────────────

  PHP Version     8.5.4
  Server          CLI
  Max Memory      128.00 MB
  Max Upload      2.00 MB
  Max Exec Time   0 seconds
  Extensions      67 loaded

── Disk I/O ──────────────────────────────────────

  Cycles: 100
  ms (lower is better)

  ┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
  │ 512.00 B │ 1.00 KB  │ 2.00 KB  │ 4.00 KB  │ ...
  ├──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
  │ 9.55ms   │ 9.78ms   │ 9.46ms   │ 10.97ms  │ ...
  └──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

── Hashing ───────────────────────────────────────

  Hash Functions (99999 cycles, ms, lower is better)

  ┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
  │ md5      │ sha1     │ sha256   │ sha512   │ xxh3     │ ...
  ├──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
  │ 143.00ms │ 155.71ms │ 387.45ms │ 288.95ms │ 16.35ms  │ ...
  └──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

  ...

──────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Total Duration  18.657s
  Report saved    reports/2026-04-11_143022.json
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

Web

php -S localhost:8000 benchmark.php

Open http://localhost:8000 for a styled HTML dashboard with cards for each module.

Remote

Install on the server via Composer and visit /benchmark.php in the browser.

Reports

JSON reports are saved to reports/ with timestamped filenames (e.g. 2026-04-11_143022.json). Disable via benchmark.output.report: false in config.

Configuration

All modules support enabled: true/false and configurable cycle counts:

benchmark:
  output:
    format: ~        # null = auto-detect, 'cli', or 'html'
    report: true     # save JSON report to reports/
  php:
    enabled: true
  disk:
    enabled: true
    cycles: 100
  memory:
    enabled: true
    count: 9999
  network:
    enabled: true
    cycles: 3
    hosts:
      - google.com
      - cloudflare.com
      - github.com
  hashing:
    enabled: true
    hashCount: 99999
    passwordCount: 10
  # ... see config/config.yml.example for all options

Security

If deploying to a web server, ensure config.yml is not publicly accessible. For Apache with mod_rewrite:

<Files "config.yml">
    deny from all
</Files>

Development

composer analyse    # Run PHPStan (level 8)
composer cs-fix     # Auto-fix code style (PER-CS2.0)
composer cs-check   # Check code style (dry run)

Contribution

I'm open to improvements and new benchmarks via pull requests.

Issues can be reported through Issues. Please include the full output of the script and your config file without the password.

License

MIT