PHP vs Node.js: A Real-World Performance Comparison

Objective

I was evaluating whether PHP or Node.js would be the better choice for developing REST APIs. In recent times, there’s been a noticeable industry shift toward Node.js for developing REST APIs, while PHP is rarely mentioned — although many CMS platforms and web applications still rely on PHP.

Before choosing the right server-side scripting technology, I wanted to check how efficiently each one handles HTTP requests.

So, I decided to measure their real-world performance under load.

The goal was to find how Traditional PHP (with Apache), Modern Laravel Octane, and Node.js (with NestJS) behave under concurrent traffic.

But before diving into the results, let’s first understand how each of them processes requests.

PHP (with Apache HTTP Server)

Traditional PHP runs in a request-per-process model.
Each HTTP request spawns a new PHP process or thread under Apache’s mod_php module.
After execution, the process ends — meaning the entire runtime and application state are re-initialized for every request

Laravel Octane (with RoadRunner)

Laravel Octane introduces a persistent application server that keeps the Laravel app in memory between requests.

It uses *RoadRunner *(or Swoole) as the server, drastically reducing startup cost per request.

Node.js (NestJS Framework)

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model.
It runs on a single thread but uses an event loop to handle thousands of concurrent connections efficiently without creating a new process per request.

Test Setup

API Endpoint: Get User Data(10 records)
Concurrent Users: 50 (VUs)
Duration: 10 seconds
Load Test Tool: k6 (Grafana)

Test Results

In short — if performance and scalability are your goals, Node.js (NestJS) leads the pack