4 ms·
I built the fastest PHP webserver in the world
- tommica 16d agoI love the idea of being able to remove the webserver from my stack, and be able to give that job to php too. Less deps!
- EGreg 15d agoIndeed. And funny enough, by writing it in PHP, I was able to make it spawn 100x as many workers on the same machine, and thus serve more 100x more users from one machine. On a 4GB machine it can handle 40,000 simultaneous users, and not just for HTTP but websockets too. It is extremely efficient — built for entrepreneurs like the ones on HN. Try it
- mpalmer 16d agoI'm confused why the copy you generated repeatedly boasts "no nginx, no Redis" as if those things don't exist independently of application servers for a reason, and as if building something that doesn't need these things (when deployed as a single instance) is particularly notable. "no Docker" - so what? Docker is a tool. Running containers on Linux has extremely low overhead. No idea what this is about. You didn't spend the effort to decorate the slop with your rationale for these choices, so I see no evidence that you built any of this.
- tobz1000 16d agoOne of the biggest shortcomings I often see with LLM-produced content, following a planning conversation, is that they misunderstand the breadth of the domain for which a detail is relevant or interesting. So if it fixes a bug where function was accidentally deleting a file, it will update the function's documentation with "does not delete any important files", as if that's a key feature and not just one of a million things it should not do. The same pattern repeats when an LLM is left to generate its own copy after a brainstorming and architecting session. It has no concept of what's important to the end-user.
- ramon156 16d agoThe only LLM that does this wel (in my opinion) is gemini. if i ask claude to fix comments, it very clearly fails in doing so. Gemini actually seems to understand the scope of a task
- DenisM 15d agoI observed the same, and generalized it as inability to recognize salience and more broadly apply discretion. In turn it makes me wonder how do humans do those things? Perhaps it is our human job to apply discretion going forward.
- EGreg 15d agoI honestly consider it lazy pattern-matching commenting slop if people don’t look at the actual software being described, don’t run it, don’t even open the sections of the webpage that describe how it works. I understand why… people are inundated with more content than ever. Even if it is a huge breakthrough, most won’t care and will just keep posting in a TL;DR way. I hoped that many on HN would actually take this for a spin. It’s free and MIT-licensed. And if you serve any websites in PHP (as 70% of all websites are), you owe it to yourself to save money and serve more users on one machine. I mean, seriously, this lets you build a PHP app that serves 40,000 users on a $5/month machine. You’d raise your Series A before you need another machine LOL
- mpalmer 15d agoI admit I did not expect an accusation of laziness. Your README makes it harder to understand why your project is unique, why the things it says are good are actually good. It's inscrutable LLM marketing-speak that suggests you had very little involvement in the content. Do you understand why that matters to someone deciding whether to run something you vibe coded? I was hoping you might address the criticism rather than get defensive. It seems more likely that you are unwilling to defend the content you published.
- bel8 16d agoIn the context of PHP it is notable to be able to run a production grade web server without nginx/apache/docker in front of it. PHP doesn't have a production grade built-in server like .NET's Kestrel.
- vachina 16d agoPHP is stable enough to not need Docker. As in there’s very little ways to fuck up a PHP setup. You just turn it on and it runs.
- tcfhgj 16d agothen find out you need to install and configure a series of php extensions
- confusedbucket 15d agoAnd get rid of all the hardcoded paths, domains, things that only make it work on the specific OS the previous person was using even though there's nothing in the app that would justify it. And then one day, someone introduces Docker, that will make it work everywhere, only now you have to start the containers in some specific order and comprehend some complicated volume setup and it runs 10x slower.
- nilamo 15d agoDocker isn't used because it helps run unstable programs. It's used because it combines the entire environment so I know the app runs the same locally as it does when deployed, without needing to install or configure anything on the server. You just start the image and it runs.
- EGreg 15d agoMost PHP requires additional webservers, such as nginx, and process managers like php-fpm, to even serve websites. This is an all-in one server. It even handles websockets with socket.io 5 compatibility! Yes, without it, people would additionally resort to Node for socket support and maybe Redis for message passing. One of the features is that this server finally handles it all. PHP for everything!
- LoganDark 16d agoYou don't need your database on a dedicated server. Not sure why the comparison table claims "$30 + DB server" when your web server is a perfectly good server already.
- iinnPP 16d agoPresumably to remove it from the need to calculate. Everyone is using a different approach and one DB may require a lot more than the 30$ server can provide. Now everyone can understand the math.
- LoganDark 16d agoThe claim is presumably that a web server running SQLite is that much better than a web server running Postgres or Redis. So they end up including it in the calculation anyway but only on one side... so it's just simply not even apples to apples.
- conductr 16d agoWhy do you need a dedicated server at all? A $7 droplet/vps would handle the full stack
- LoganDark 15d agoI meant a server dedicated to the database, but yes, I agree. Never said the web server had to be bare metal. I wonder if the misconception is from relying on managed database services. Maybe instead of installing their own database, they order one from a service provider like AWS or GCP. That would explain how they'd think that a database like Postgres would have to live on a different machine.
- EGreg 15d agoThe goal is to optimize everything other than the database. The vast majority of PHP apps are I/O bound and this webserver lets you handle 100x as many users as php-fpm. That’s the point. Your code can remain the same and keep using whatever database.
- BatchJob 16d agoYou can see the slop through the headline. No need to click. Posts like this are turning the internet into a trash pile. Nobody needs this slop, abandonware. Heres the template: "I" <--- prompted some LLM "built" <--- to generate code for a "fastest" <-- insert specious claim here "PHP server" <-- thing "And I prompted the LLM to build a website" <---- link Im sorry folks but this just doesnt cut it anymore. I dont think it ever did.
- ceejayoz 16d agoI saw someone promote their new simple framework today. It was all TODOs.
- EGreg 15d agoAnd this one has a working webserver you can run in one command, a graphical user interface and real-time dashboard, tests to prove the claims, and example apps to make it easy to start. Not to mention that you can run your existing PHP apps unmodified with it just like you can with php-fpm.
- ceejayoz 15d agoAll that may be true! Some of these projects are genuinely awesome. The problem is having to wade through it all. I have finite time.
- bliteben 16d agoI feel like HN has had posts like this for 15 years. This one is just an opportunity to discuss where php falls with llms in the mix.
- croisillon 16d agoJust because LLMs can write copy for webpages doesn't mean they should. A landing page should not warrant a tl;dr. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665895
- etchalon 16d agoI haven't used PHP as a daily workhorse in a decade, so I guess I don't understand why I would want a web server in pure PHP? Nginx exists.
- carlosjobim 16d ago[flagged]
- Capricorn2481 16d agoWhat a tedious reply. They're genuinely asking what the technical reasons for wanting that would be. You're reading it in the silliest way possible.
- carlosjobim 16d agoPHP is stil the backbone of the internet and a great tool. I don't think that anybody has to explain why people would want to use it. If somebody doesn't want anything to do with PHP that's their decision, but why clog up the threads? And every HN post has a similar dismissive comment. Why? Unless you think HN is a personal inbox...
- nashashmi 15d agoThey are asking about why would you need an alternate system? What is the technical reason behind it? What’s the disadvantage in the current system? All while acknowledging that they used to work in PHP and haven’t recently so they understand a lot less.
- Capricorn2481 15d agoIf you read the comment for more than half a second you'd see they're not questioning why someone would use PHP. They're asking why you would use this particular server over nginx/apache, given how robust their support is. Signed, a PHP developer.
- stackskipton 16d ago
- dingdingdang 16d agoI for one do not get the hate, nobody needs to use/or-waste-time-commenting on this project if they have no need/want. However, I do agree that it needs some more contributors on-board alongside with a couple months more support and bug squashing. And yes: better rewrite that website without the clanger involved in the wording! ;) On a positive note: the performance is genuinely impressive.. what does it take to unlock this performance if I'm NOT running one of the big "usual" frameworks? The devil is always in the detail, best get some practical advice up on exactly what needs to happen with a medium piece of custom code to get it to said max performance.
- bawolff 16d agoI was kind of wondering too. I assume this only works if you load a lot of classes before touching request specific variables. That might work for big framework, but you probably have to rewrite a lot if not using one. From a pragmatic perspective, its unclear to me how much this actually speeds things up. I would assume if using php you probably have complex logic and start up time is not dominating the runtime.
- sourthyme 16d agoI think we are all afraid that an LLM could generate a ridiculously fast webserver and be production viable. But I'm still glad we are taking this through the ringer.
- 0gs 15d agowhoa. is clanger:clanker::darn:damn? a softer touch. i like it ok ok, or "dang" (or did i mandela myself)
- 0gs 15d agodef tripped over those asterisks
- dingdingdang 14d agoYeah, gotta say clangers are softer* than clankers clearly. It was a slip but might adopt due to the plush connotations. As per one of the few, actually non-dangerous to children, children shows produced by the BBC in the 70s
- bawolff 16d ago[dead]
- dmitrijbelikov 16d agoYou should look at Workerman
- progx 16d agoWorkerman does something else.
- dreadnip 16d agoPeople have been using pcntl_fork to speed up PHP code since the 90s. It seems good on paper, can produce an "impressive" demo and falls apart quickly on real world projects and use cases. This is nothing more than LLM slop/psychosis.
- brandon272 16d agoWhat do you mean LLM slop? OP says they built it themselves.
- thrance 15d agoYeah, and surely they also wrote the 131KB unreadable-wall-of-text README themselves. That's like 1/9th Moby Dick, to put into perspective.
- EGreg 15d agoYes, I actually iterated a lot on that README and personally directed the LLM to produce every section in there, as an artifact. Normally it would produce a much shorter README, and I should probably have split it up. That is exactly what I did on the actual website. The README is no longer than nginx documentation, though, or many manfiles of programs. The README explains all the features in one file, with results of actual benchmarks. I asked it to put emojis in there as well. I use LLMs in my toolchain, same as I also use compilers. In fact, I use the LLMs to generate end-to-end test suites, and the test running is automated as well.
- thrance 15d agoI don't care how much you were or were not involved with the README, no one is reading through all that. If you can't be arsed to, at the very least, write the prose around your project, why should we devote any time engaging with it? > I use LLMs in my toolchain, same as I also use compilers. In fact, I use the LLMs to generate end-to-end test suites, and the test running is automated as well. Yeah, I could see that.
- mschuster91 16d agos/you built/you spent LLM tokens to build/g The general idea makes sense. PHP, particularly modern Java-style PHP, is notorious for loading sometimes thousands of files for every single request. I think there's opcache enabled by default, so the load on the filesystem is reduced by quite a bit, but even opcache still needs to do some sort of parsing for each request that comes in.
- noir_lord 16d ago> I think there's opcache enabled by default. Indeed, it's on by default in 8.5 and is no longer considered a non-optional extension (it's compiled in) - you can turn it off at runtime but it will be bundled, largely so they could have it on my default[1][2] and it simplifies integration of something that was universally integrated de facto before that. It was probably due/overdue but I actually like that they are conservative with which extensions become part of the "core" and in reality almost every packaging of PHP has included it back to 5.5 and having worked on large production systems written in PHP I can't think of a single one that didn't use it it in production. There is also FrankenPHP (and others) which negate much of that overhead (in worker mode). While introducing other issues you do have to be careful of that would be less of an issue in "classic" mode (literally what FrankenPHP calls it). There isn't a tonne of good info out of what you gain in the switch from nginx/php-fpm to FrankenPHP though it does seem like you do gain in some ways (but it's very application dependent). [1] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/make_opcache_required https://wiki.php.net/rfc/make_opcache_required [2] https://www.php.net/manual/en/opcache.configuration.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/opcache.configuration.php
- EGreg 15d agoWhether the opcache is enabled or not, the vast majority of production PHP code is I/O bound - workers wait for the network or filesystem or database. Roadrunner, FrankenPHP and Swoole try to make it evented like Node, but require you to rewrite all your code to use their libraries. For everything from mysql to curl. This lets you run your PHP unmodified, in 2 different ways: 1) with long persistent workers, clearing all statics and globals between requests 2) if that doesn’t work, eg because your functions have static variables inside etc. then you can use the fork mode, which can still handle 100x as many users as php-fpm due to the amount of RAM each of the workers takes up aa that’s the point!
- nzeid 15d ago> php-fpm re-bootstraps the framework on every request (10–50ms) What is the setup/benchmark that caused you to see this?
- EGreg 15d agoIt’s not about a benchmark. PHP-FPM executes your .php file from the beginning every time, so it does require(…) all the classes etc. and then proceeds to load the configuration from files etc. A good framework can maybe cache some of this with the opcode cache, and apcu. Saving some milliseconds. But regardless of all this, each worker process takes up a lot of memory (the entire framework, etc) which is often megabytes. By contrast, the Qbix webserver forks after you have loaded the classes. Being written in PHP actually gives it an advantage — the workers become much smaller and you can run 100x of them. This accomplishes what no other PHP webserver has managed to do: give you the speed of Swoole / FrankenPHP while at the samw time let you run unmodified PHP scripts in a “shared-nothing” fork environment, maintaining the strict isolation PHP is known for, so there are no memory leaks or data leaks between requests. Speaking of that, check out the “full-stack microservice” architecture that allows you to isolate your sensitive credentials / config from the main PHP process, preventing a host of attacks.
- nzeid 14d ago> A good framework can maybe cache some of this with the opcode cache, and apcu. Saving some milliseconds. This framing is confusing because OPcache has for the past 15 years taken care of exactly this bootstrapping you're worried about. In a competing share-nothing setup you merely come in at a tie for performance (barring first run of `require`). I do not see 10-50ms latencies in any of my deploys which is why I'm skeptical. That said, the big sell of your project for me might be memory management - less memory means more workers which is always a good thing if it comes at no cost to latency.
- EGreg 14d agoYep, you got it. The big difference is the memory savings, not as much the saving milliseconds per request, although that might be useful too if it takes 40-50ms to bootstrap and load configs every time.
- pshirshov 15d ago> 1060 req/s Nice! I remember 2010 when a single-core pentium 4 was happily doing 18k RPS with Glassfish. Ten more years of progress and you can match that!
- EGreg 15d agoGlassfish was Java not PHP, and it was also using AOT (ahead-of-time) loading of bytecode, similar to what this does for PHP classes. The tests here were also done on one core. Although I am skeptical that PHP after so many years, on much faster CPUs, cannot outperform Java from 20 years ago on slower CPUs. PS: I wrote a language called U that you can transpile PHP into - and it speeds things up by another factor of 10x even over this webserver, because it’s a compiled language and it transpiles pctl_fork() into something that doesn’t require the OS forking processes (so it works even on Windows): https://ulanguage.org https://ulanguage.org
- christophilus 15d agoSort of unrelated, but I recently built an http server in Odin to learn the language. It’s a pleasant language, and very low memory usage, if managed well. Around 50k requests per second on my old laptop. The surprising thing was that Bun matched it (albeit at 50MB RAM usage vs 3MB for Odin). It’s a lot of fun working on such things, but the reality is, for most apps, almost any stack is more than fine.
- confusedbucket 15d agoOutside of the prefork mode (which cannot compete even with just FPM/Apache mod), this has a bunch of isolation issues that I don't see mentioned anywhere; namely statics in functions (often seen as a request-lifetime cache in PHP), typed statics without defaults, define(), $_ENV, setlocale(), ignore_user_abort() or mb_internal_encoding() just to name a few. It also assumes all function/class declarations are guarded, so this isn't a drop-in replacement for a webserver that "just works"; for most code, it probably doesn't, so the "unmodified PHP" claim seems like a stretch. EDIT: After reading through the fairly long README, this is mentioned. So you either use the provided server API to make it fast, or use the CGI mode - even for WP, Laravel or Symfony ("legacy", really?)). It'd be better advertised as a framework, using which is the only way to actually achieve the promised results. I'm also a bit confused by the webserver code itself; it's PHP 5 code (with all the @class and @private annotations, even) that targets 8.1 (EOL) and yields deprecation notices on PHP 8.2. The taken approach is interesting, but I'd not put this in front of anything that matters. If you're this uncomfortable with having to run a webserver, but comfortable with a vibecoded webserver, consider switching to Go, .NET or any other stack where you don't have to fight the PHP's inherent shared-nothing model.
- EGreg 15d agoActually, there is a “fork” mode that outperforms php-fpm by about 100x. That is, it allows the webserver to spawn 100x more processes on the same machine (tested) on Linux and Mac. The trick is that the pcntl_fork() is done after loading the classes, so because the OS does copy-on-write of memory pages, each child process takes up maybe 4-200KB. One 4GB machine can handle 40,000 simultaneous users. This fork mode is exactly for the type of unmofoeid code you’re talking about — which may have some thing not reset between requests. It is still capable of 10-100x more throughout than PHP-FPM, even in its “prefork” mode. This is a “post-fork” if you will. The code is compatibke with PHP all the way down to 5, so this webserver can be run on any PHP environment from the last 15 years.
- garbageinout 15d ago[dead]