Server Benchmark: Apache, Nginx, Cherokee, Lighttp

Quick Benchmark of Apache, Nginx, Cherokee, Lighttpd

A short benchmark of this 4 server with dynamic and static content.
All server provides the same functionality like URL rewriting, password protected folders/files etc. but all have their own way to do that
For shared hosting where the user has no access to the server configuration, Apache with the .htaccess file support is a good choice.

I used the benchmark tool from Apache ab -n 50000 -c 20
php-cgi goes over a Unix socket

Dynamic Content (PHP)

Server	Requests (sec)	Transferrate (KB/s)
Apache 2.2.14	2125	11684
Nginx 0.7.65	1734 1861	9436 (php-cgi) 10115 (php-fpm)
Cherokee 1.0.0	2119 2103	11562 (php-cgi) 11454 (php-fpm)

Static content (14785 Bytes HTML file)

Server	Requests (sec)	Transferrate (KB/s)
Apache 2.2.14	6768	99593
Lighttpd 2.4.26	15782	213866
Cherokee 1.0.0	7602	111285
Nginx 0.7.65	10912	159828

More “real live” test with PHP and eAccelerator enabled

Cherokee/NGinx/Lighttp are using the same php-fpm socket

Server	Requests/s	Ø
Apache 2.2.14	2713|2744|2766	2741
Nginx 0.7.65	2416|2433|2418	2422
Cherokee 1.0.0	2702|2638|2694	2678
Lighttp 1.4.26	2492|2363|2540	2465

Results

There is a small difference between fast-cgi and php-fpm (alternative implementation of fast-cgi).
You should prefer php-fpm (will be included in PHP 5.4 or you must build it manually from source).

Apache and Cherokee are both excellent for dynamic content.

For static content Lighttp is the fastest server.

There is not _the_ best server but a good combination: Lighttpd or Nginx as a proxy for serving static content, Apache or Cherokee for the dynamic content. Or a another proxy server like Varnish for static content and caching and Apache/Cherokee for serving dynamic content

For a PHP site with only 1 server running: Apache.

For a smaller memory footprint and if .htaccess is not needed: Cherokee (also the only server with a very good graphical admin interface)