PHP vs Node.js (2026): I Benchmarked Both — Here's What Surprised Me

There is a conversation that has been going on in backend development circles for over a decade now, and it refuses to die. PHP or Node.js? Which one should you use? Which one is faster? Which one has a future? I spent the last several weeks setting up identical environments, running real benchmarks, building small but representative applications in both, and reading through a significant amount of documentation, community data, and developer surveys. I went in with assumptions. Most of them wer