The Performance Glow-Up
PHP keeps getting faster without you changing a single line of code. Kinsta benchmarked 13 CMSs and frameworks across PHP versions in 2026 — here's what upgrading buys you:
| Platform | PHP 7.4 | PHP 8.2 | PHP 8.4 | PHP 8.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce | 44 req/s | 55 req/s | 53 req/s | 71 req/s |
| WordPress 6.8 | 139 req/s | 146 req/s | 148 req/s | 148 req/s |
| Laravel 12 | — | 730 req/s | 696 req/s | 700 req/s |
| Symfony 7.4 | — | 1,019 req/s | 993 req/s | 1,002 req/s |
| CodeIgniter 4.6 | — | 1,216 req/s | 1,214 req/s | 1,874 req/s |
| Grav 1.8 | — | 600 req/s | 586 req/s | 1,029 req/s |
| Drupal 10 | — | 1,401 req/s | 1,391 req/s | — |
Source: Kinsta PHP Benchmarks, 2026 · ApacheBench, 5 runs per config
+61%
WooCommerce: 7.4 → 8.5
+54%
CodeIgniter: 8.4 → 8.5
+71%
Grav: 8.2 → 8.5
WooCommerce jumped from 44 to 71 requests per second — a 61% improvement — just by upgrading PHP. CodeIgniter hit 1,874 req/s on PHP 8.5, a 54% leap from 8.4. Grav nearly doubled. This is free performance. No code changes. Just apt upgrade php.
The JIT compiler introduced in PHP 8.0, combined with continuous Zend Engine optimizations, means PHP gets measurably faster with every version. Your existing codebase benefits automatically.
Significance: Free Speed
In most languages, performance improvements require code changes — new APIs, refactored hot paths, async rewrites. In PHP, you upgrade the runtime and your existing code runs faster. For WooCommerce shops processing real revenue, a 61% throughput increase from a version bump is the difference between scaling comfortably and throwing hardware at the problem.