Perl versus PHP fastest programs Always look at the source code. These are only the fastest programs. 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 10.60 1,494,988 287 10.72 37% 0% 0% 63% PHP 14.19 529,416 438 22.75 35% 54% 49% 21% spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 39.52 12,216 555 154.07 97% 98% 97% 98% PHP 33.24 24,100 1152 128.43 95% 98% 98% 95% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 61.27 1,069,048 476 191.99 82% 93% 64% 74% PHP 41.32 169,460 1079 134.99 88% 75% 84% 79% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 90.31 55,080 871 90.89 100% 0% 0% 0% PHP 53.24 7,888 1062 56.38 88% 3% 2% 12% pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 3.61 8,548 261 3.69 0% 1% 1% 100% PHP 2.11 9,064 399 2.14 100% 1% 0% 0% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 729.64 6,528 1429 743.07 29% 47% 2% 24% PHP 329.52 7,716 1082 348.91 21% 4% 43% 37% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 129.89 2,519,152 761 457.58 96% 84% 88% 84% PHP 51.13 1,584,360 751 187.68 90% 92% 95% 90% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 569.32 12,088 570 2,231.43 97% 100% 97% 98% PHP 219.15 21,724 1160 870.05 99% 99% 99% 100% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 16.03 156,916 820 46.37 79% 77% 87% 46% PHP 2.88 155,276 816 5.63 44% 79% 33% 38% mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 721.25 44,280 586 2,884.18 100% 100% 100% 100% PHP 105.40 122,084 875 418.58 99% 99% 100% 99% Perl This is perl 5, version 30, subversion 0 (v5.30.0) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi PHP PHP 7.4.5 (cli) (built: May 11 2020 13:25:48) ( NTS ) Copyright (c) The PHP Group Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies all Perl programs & measurements all PHP programs & measurements