frankenphp/docs/performance.md

Performance

By default, FrankenPHP tries to offer a good compromise between performance and ease of use. However, it is possible to substantially improve performance using an appropriate configuration.

Number of Threads and Workers

By default, FrankenPHP starts 2 times more threads and workers (in worker mode) than the available numbers of CPU.

The appropriate values depend heavily on how your application is written, what it does and your hardware. We strongly recommend changing these values. For best system stability, it is recommended to have num_threads x memory_limit < available_memory.

To find the right values, it's best to run load tests simulating real traffic. k6 and Gatling are good tools for this.

To configure the number of threads, use the num_threads option of the php_server and php directives. To change the number of workers, use the num option of the worker section of the frankenphp directive.

max_threads

While it's always better to know exactly what your traffic will look like, real-life applications tend to be more unpredictable. The max_threads allows FrankenPHP to automatically spawn additional threads at runtime up to the specified limit. max_threads can help you figure out how many threads you need to handle your traffic and can make the server more resilient to latency spikes. If set to auto, the limit will be estimated based on the memory_limit in your php.ini. If not able to do so, auto will instead default to 2x num_threads. `max_threads is similar to PHP FPM's pm.max_children.

Worker Mode

Enabling the worker mode dramatically improves performance, but your app must be adapted to be compatible with this mode: you need to create a worker script and to be sure that the app is not leaking memory.

Don't Use musl

The static binaries we provide and the Alpine Linux variant of the official Docker images are using the musl libc.

PHP is known to be significantly slower when using this alternative C library instead of the traditional GNU library, especially when compiled in ZTS mode (thread-safe), which is required for FrankenPHP.

Also, some bugs only happen when using musl.

In production environments, we strongly recommend to use the glibc.

This can be achieved by using the Debian Docker images (the default) and by compiling FrankenPHP from sources.

Alternatively, we provide static binaries compiled with the mimalloc allocator, which makes FrankenPHP+musl faster (but still slower than FrankenPHP+glibc).

Go Runtime Configuration

FrankenPHP is written in Go.

In general, the Go runtime doesn't require any special configuration, but in certain circumstances, specific configuration improves performance.

You likely want to set the GODEBUG environment variable to cgocheck=0 (the default in the FrankenPHP Docker images).

If you run FrankenPHP in containers (Docker, Kubernetes, LXC...) and limit the memory available for the containers, set the GOMEMLIMIT environment variable to the available amount of memory.

For more details, the Go documentation page dedicated to this subject is a must-read to get the most out of the runtime.

file_server

By default, the php_server directive automatically sets up a file server to serve static files (assets) stored in the root directory.

This feature is convenient, but comes with a cost. To disable it, use the following config:

php_server {
    file_server off
}

try_files

Besides static files and PHP files, php_server will also try to serve your application's index and directory index files (/path/ -> /path/index.php). If you don't need directory indices, you can disable them by explicitly defining try_files like this:

php_server {
    try_files {path} index.php
    root /root/to/your/app # explicitly adding the root here allows for better caching
}

This can significantly reduce the number of unnecessary file operations.

An alternate approach with 0 unnecessary file system operations would be to instead use the php directive and split files from PHP by path. This approach works well if your entire application is served by one entry file. An example configuration that serves static files behind an /assets folder could look like this:

route {
    @assets {
        path /assets/*
    }

    # everything behind /assets is handled by the file server
    file_server @assets {
        root /root/to/your/app
    }

    # everything that is not in /assets is handled by your index or worker PHP file
    rewrite index.php
    php {
        root /root/to/your/app # explicitly adding the root here allows for better caching
    }
}

Placeholders

You can use placeholders in the root and env directives. However, this prevents caching these values, and comes with a significant performance cost.

If possible, avoid placeholders in these directives.

resolve_root_symlink

By default, if the document root is a symbolic link, it is automatically resolved by FrankenPHP (this is necessary for PHP to work properly). If the document root is not a symlink, you can disable this feature.

php_server {
    resolve_root_symlink false
}

This will improve performance if the root directive contains placeholders. The gain will be negligible in other cases.

Logs

Logging is obviously very useful, but, by definition, it requires I/O operations and memory allocations, which considerably reduces performance. Make sure you set the logging level correctly, and only log what's necessary.

PHP Performance

FrankenPHP uses the official PHP interpreter. All usual PHP-related performance optimizations apply with FrankenPHP.

In particular:

• check that OPcache is installed, enabled and properly configured
• enable Composer autoloader optimizations
• ensure that the realpath cache is big enough for the needs of your application
• use preloading

For more details, read the dedicated Symfony documentation entry (most tips are useful even if you don't use Symfony).