Fresh PHP performance benchmarks compare PHP 7.4 through the current Git state of PHP 8.6, run on an Intel Xeon system with Fedora 44. PHPbench showed gradual gains across PHP 8.x releases, but PHP 8.6 Git was regressing versus PHP 8.5, expected to be resolved before the stable 8.6.0 release later in 2026. A separate self-test showed no such regression, with PHP 8.6's JIT providing a slight additional boost. Older PHP7/PHP5 releases were excluded because they segfaulted when built with GCC 16.
