Python and PHP are two of the most widely used programming languages for web development and beyond. Python‘s elegant syntax and robust ecosystem have made it a go-to for everything from web apps and system administration to data science and artificial intelligence. PHP powers over 75% of all websites and revolutionized web development with its server-side scripting capabilities.
While Python and PHP overlap quite a bit, especially as backend languages, their different philosophies and features impact their performance and speed. In this in-depth comparison, we‘ll examine the pros and cons of Python vs PHP and analyze how they stack up in real-world benchmarks and situations.
The Evolution of Python and PHP
Python and PHP have both been around since the early 1990s and have evolved significantly over the years in terms of features, performance, and popularity.
Python was created in 1991 by Guido van Rossum at the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands. Van Rossum designed Python to be highly extensible and more readable than languages like C. Python 2.0, released in 2000, introduced major features like list comprehensions and garbage collection. Python 3.0, released in 2008, made significant changes that broke backward compatibility but further modernized the language. Today, Python consistently ranks among the most popular and fastest growing languages.
PHP began in 1994 when Rasmus Lerdorf created a set of C binaries that allowed him to track visits to his online resume, called "Personal Home Page." PHP 3, released in 1998, supported object-oriented programming and had the official meaning "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor." PHP 4, released in 2000, added superglobals like $_POST that became cornerstones of PHP web development. PHP 5, released in 2004, introduced advanced OOP features and spawned many MVC frameworks like Laravel. PHP 7, released in 2015, nearly doubled the performance of PHP 5. PHP 8, the current version, included a JIT compiler, constructor property promotion, and other performance boosters.
Key Differences Between Python and PHP
While Python and PHP can both be used for web development, scripting, and more, they have some major differences in terms of language design and typical uses.
Language Design and Syntax
Python‘s design philosophy emphasizes code readability, simplicity, and explicitness. Its syntax is very clean and minimal, using indentation instead of braces to denote code blocks and clear English keywords. Python supports procedural, object-oriented, and functional paradigms. It is strongly and dynamically typed, meaning variables are bound to objects, not types, and type checking occurs at runtime. Here‘s an example of a simple Python function:
def greet(name):
"""Greet a person by name."""
print(f"Hello, {name}!")
greet("Alice") # Output: Hello, Alice!PHP‘s syntax is heavily inspired by C and Perl. It supports procedural and object-oriented paradigms but not functional out of the box. Like Python, PHP is dynamically typed, but it allows for more type coercion and has different variable scope behavior. PHP embeds the code within HTML using <?php ?> tags. Here‘s the same function in PHP:
<?php
function greet(string $name) {
// Greet a person by name
echo "Hello, $name!";
}
greet("Alice"); // Output: Hello, Alice!
?>Typical Uses and Ecosystem
Python and PHP have some overlapping use cases but also distinct ecosystems and communities:
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Python is a general-purpose language used for a wide variety of applications, including web development, data analysis, machine learning, systems administration, desktop apps, and more. Python has a vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks for different domains, such as Django and Flask for web dev, NumPy and Pandas for data science, and TensorFlow and PyTorch for AI/ML. Python is very popular in academic and research settings.
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PHP is a web-focused language primarily used for server-side scripting and building dynamic websites and web apps. PHP has many powerful web frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and CodeIgniter, as well as CMSes like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. PHP also has strong support for interacting with databases like MySQL. PHP is not commonly used outside of web development.
Benchmarking Python vs PHP Performance
Now let‘s get to the main event – comparing the speed and performance of Python vs PHP. We‘ll look at some common web development benchmarks and analyze the results.
Web Framework Benchmarks
One of the most common ways to compare Python and PHP performance is to benchmark their popular web frameworks. The TechEmpower Web Framework Benchmarks is a respected third-party source that measures the requests per second handled by different language frameworks.
Here are the results for Python and PHP frameworks on the JSON serialization test, which measures raw speed:
| Framework | Language | Requests/sec |
|---|---|---|
| Laravel | PHP | 61,466 |
| Symfony | PHP | 57,591 |
| Django | Python | 53,833 |
| Flask | Python | 42,234 |
As you can see, the PHP frameworks Laravel and Symfony outperformed the Python frameworks Django and Flask in raw requests per second. This suggests that PHP has an edge over Python when it comes to speed for handling simple web requests.
However, the story changes when looking at the Fortunes test, which measures dynamic content rendering and database queries:
| Framework | Language | Requests/sec |
|---|---|---|
| Flask | Python | 215,165 |
| Django | Python | 166,572 |
| Laravel | PHP | 133,289 |
| Symfony | PHP | 83,569 |
Here, the Python frameworks Flask and Django surpassed the PHP frameworks Laravel and Symfony in requests per second. This implies that Python‘s metaprogramming magic and elegant DB libraries give it an advantage for more complex, real-world web requests.
Algorithmic Benchmarks
Another way to compare Python and PHP performance is with algorithmic benchmarks that test specific language features and constructs.
The benchmarksgame compares the execution time and memory usage of different languages for common algorithms. Here are the results for Python and PHP:
| Benchmark | Python Time | PHP Time | Python Memory | PHP Memory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| n-body | 421.51s | 2598.11s | 28.81MiB | 774.74MiB |
| fannkuch-redux | 658.58s | 1167.14s | 34.72MiB | 32.42MiB |
| spectral-norm | 235.11s | 167.92s | 27.49MiB | 30.80MiB |
| mandelbrot | 258.46s | 219.29s | 27.62MiB | 34.58MiB |
| pidigits | 2.81s | 1.44s | 9.63MiB | 0.41MiB |
The benchmarks show that Python and PHP have different performance characteristics on an algorithmic level:
- PHP is significantly slower than Python for certain math-heavy algorithms like n-body and fannkuch-redux.
- PHP has faster execution time than Python for some algorithms like spectral-norm and pidigits.
- Python generally uses less memory than PHP, except on pidigits where PHP is more memory efficient.
These results highlight that raw algorithmic performance depends a lot on the specific operation and that Python‘s reputation for being "slow" is not always deserved.
So in summary, PHP is generally faster than Python for simple web serving tasks, while Python can be faster than PHP for more complex web requests and non-web algorithms. But there‘s a lot of nuance involved.
Why PHP is Faster Than Python (Usually)
There are a few main reasons why PHP often outperforms Python for web development speed:
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Architecture – PHP was purpose-built for web serving and has a simpler execution model than Python. Every PHP web request spins up an independent engine that doesn‘t persist state, while Python web apps run through a WSGI middleware layer.
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Implementation – The main PHP implementation is engineered in low-level C for performance and can be compiled to machine code with HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine). CPython, the reference Python implementation, is a slower interpreter without native compilation.
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Typing – PHP‘s weaker, dynamic typing is faster at runtime because it doesn‘t do the same level of type checking as Python. Python‘s stricter, stronger typing adds slight overhead.
These language differences give PHP a general speed advantage over Python for handling basic web requests. PHP executes "closer to the metal" than Python and is optimized for short scripts.
When Python Outperforms PHP
Despite PHP‘s reputation for speed, there are situations where Python can be faster than PHP:
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Complex web apps – As the TechEmpower benchmarks showed, Python frameworks like Django and Flask can outperform PHP frameworks like Laravel for web requests that require a lot of processing or database querying. Python‘s metaprogramming, generators, and magic methods add efficiencies.
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Asynchronous code – Python has strong support for asynchronous programming with asyncio and async/await, while PHP doesn‘t have true native async. Python apps can leverage async to handle many concurrent requests faster than synchronous PHP.
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JIT compiled – PyPy is a JIT implementation of Python that can be over 4 times faster than standard CPython. For some PyPy-compatible web apps, Python will beat PHP speed.
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Caching and queuing – For web apps that rely heavily on caching with Redis/Memcached or background queuing, the speed differences between Python and PHP can be minimized. The overhead of the caching or queuing layer outweighs the language differences.
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Math and ML – For web apps that do mathematical or ML tasks, using Python libraries like NumPy, SciPy, or TensorFlow is much faster than pure PHP. PHP is not well suited to scientific computing.
So while PHP is faster than Python on average, an optimized Python web stack can beat an average PHP stack. The differences often come down more to the libraries and database than the language itself.
Conclusion
So which is faster overall, Python or PHP? It‘s honestly hard to say, as it really depends on the exact application and infrastructure. But here are some general recommendations:
- For simple web scripts, command-line tools, and web APIs, PHP will normally be faster than Python.
- For large web apps requiring a lot of processing, packages, or async, Python will often be faster than PHP.
- For web projects already using WordPress, Drupal, or other PHP frameworks, sticking with PHP will likely be faster than porting to Python.
- For web projects involving data analysis, machine learning, or mathematical computing, Python will definitely be faster than PHP.
- For most modern web development, the speed differences between Python and PHP are less important than other concerns like scalability, maintainability, and developer productivity. Both languages are fast enough at scale.
Personally, as a digital technology expert, I slightly prefer Python over PHP for larger web projects because I appreciate Python‘s elegance, expansive libraries, and async capabilities. But I happily work on PHP when needed and know it can be incredibly fast when used correctly, like with HHVM and caching.
The reality is that Python and PHP evolved from different backgrounds but have largely converged for modern web development needs. You can build incredibly fast web apps with either language if you use caching, queuing, and stateless architectures. And you can build incredibly slow web apps with either language if you don‘t consider performance.
My advice is to focus more on clean code, efficient algorithms, and smart architectures than to micro-optimize with one language or the other. And always benchmark to see what works best for your specific situation. The debate between Python and PHP speed is not as clear-cut as it seems.
