TL;DR: In I/O-bound PHP applications, reducing Docker CPU by 87% (from 4 to 0.5 vCPU) and memory by 96% (from 8 GB to 256 MB) has zero measurable impact on RPS. All configurations delivered 93–94 RPS under 50ms database latency. The bottleneck is external (database wait time), not internal (CPU or memory). Running PHP in … Read more
PHP in 2026 is no longer the language dismissed as a “toy” a decade ago. From PHP 7 to PHP 8.x, the performance leap has brought PHP back to the center of modern backend technology discussions. At this pivotal moment, PHP’s performance story is no longer just about “how fast JIT is” – it is … Read more
After our deep dive into PHP 8.5 JIT modes and the bare metal application server benchmarks, many readers asked the same question: Does Docker really slow down PHP application servers? Today we benchmark PHP-FPM, RoadRunner, and Swoole in three scenarios: bare metal, Docker default bridge network, and Docker host network + CPU pinning. The results are surprising—with the right flags, Docker can actually outperform bare metal.
