PHP Vitals

How fast is your web host? Dozens of PHP speed tests, 1 overall grade: The easy way to compare hosting performance.

Bringing Transparency to Your Web Host’s PHP Performance

The faster your websites run, the better. Better SEO, better UX, better returns on your effort. But in any PHP-based system (including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and many others) there’s an important performance factor that’s hard for you to see and mostly beyond your control. It’s your web hosting. How fast does PHP run on the infrastructure that your web host provides?

PHP Vitals gives you a simple way to find out.

A Free, Quick and Easy Speed Test

In a minute or two, PHP Vitals analyses exactly how well your server performs on dozens of different tests of PHP performance. When you run PHP Vitals you’ll see an overall grade, and you can see where your web host belongs on the PHP Vitals leaderboard.

You can’t see your server hardware. You don’t know how many others are sharing your resources. You don’t know if your hosting is rate-limited, over-provisioned, or dependent on ancient CPUs. PHP Vitals lifts the lid on what you’re really getting for your money.

What Gets Tested

PHP Vitals focuses on base PHP functions. Base categories are:
– php_features
– math
– string
– array
– crypto
– file
– serialization

Specific operations that are tested include:
– PHP Class (getter/setter).
– Public properties and methods.
– Simple math operations.
– Complex math operations.
– String concatenations.
– Regular expressions (regex).
– Functions: explode, strpos.
– Operations: Array sorting, set, unset, copy, and others.
– Password hashing.
– MD5 hashing.
– SHA256 hashing.

There are no MySQL or database benchmarks included.

Features

PHP Vitals suite of PHP performance benchmarking tests usually takes only 1-2 minutes to run. The tests give you live performance data.

Each time you run PHP Vitals you’ll see a breakdown of individual test data and an overall grade (A+ to F). A visual grade scale shows where you sit on the scale, with a plain-language comparison such as “faster than X% of servers.” Test data is objective, for example the time taken for each test. Grades are based on the overall time taken. The subjective grading scale is likely to change over time (e.g. an A in 2025 is unlikely to still be an A in 2027).

Benchmark test names, categories, and iteration counts are fetched from phpvitals.com when you run a test; all test code executes locally on your server.

Every completed run is saved to a local benchmark history on your site (last 15 runs), whether or not you share results. Leaderboard sharing is optional: if enabled, completed benchmarks may also be submitted to phpvitals.com so developers can compare hosting performance worldwide. No personal data is collected.

Read the full description on the official page →