Perl versus PHP fastest programs Always look at the source code. These are only the fastest programs. Do some of them use manually vectorized SIMD? Look at the other programs. They may seem more-like a fair comparison to you. reverse-complement source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 6.36 1,495,132 287 6.52 0% 0% 2% 100% PHP 7.06 534,336 446 11.90 14% 49% 40% 65% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 37.72 1,255,884 652 131.45 88% 89% 87% 85% PHP 20.15 254,792 1079 69.22 91% 96% 80% 76% pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 1.90 8,268 261 2.16 100% 2% 3% 9% PHP 0.91 13,196 399 0.96 2% 0% 3% 100% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 58.08 55,188 871 59.16 1% 100% 1% 0% PHP 22.82 12,356 1062 24.32 3% 2% 2% 100% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 53.02 1,048,568 797 195.75 91% 88% 100% 90% PHP 18.64 1,588,704 760 67.29 89% 90% 96% 86% spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 24.69 12,188 555 96.59 97% 99% 98% 97% PHP 7.51 35,364 1152 29.55 99% 98% 98% 98% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 419.75 6,388 1429 429.50 1% 1% 1% 100% PHP 71.75 12,072 1082 76.86 3% 1% 2% 100% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 10.10 157,208 820 31.98 96% 67% 93% 61% PHP 1.73 162,348 816 3.58 37% 88% 44% 39% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 392.54 12,116 570 1,568.84 100% 100% 100% 100% PHP 63.18 44,168 1160 250.98 99% 99% 100% 99% mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 542.82 45,036 586 2,169.30 100% 100% 100% 100% PHP 24.89 135,480 875 99.12 100% 100% 99% 100% Perl This is perl 5, version 32, subversion 0 (v5.32.0) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi PHP PHP 8.0.0 (cli) (built: Nov 26 2020 09:02:29) ( NTS ) Copyright (c) The PHP Group Zend Engine v4.0.0-dev, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies all Perl programs & measurements all PHP programs & measurements