Application Servers

RoadRunner – high-performance PHP application server, load balancer, and process manager

RoadRunner is a high-performance PHP application server, load balancer, and process manager. It supports running as a service with the ability to extend its functionality on a per-project basis.

RoadRunner includes PSR-7/PSR-17 compatible HTTP and HTTP/2 server and can be used to replace the classic Nginx+FPM setup.

RoadRunner is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Production-ready.
  • PCI DSS compliant.
  • PSR-7 HTTP server (file uploads, error handling, static files, hot reload, middlewares, event listeners).
  • HTTPS and HTTP/2 support (including HTTP/2 Push, H2C).
  • Fully customizable server, FastCGI support.
  • Flexible environment configuration.
  • No external PHP dependencies (64bit version required), drop-in (based on Goridge).
  • Load balancer, process manager and task pipeline.
  • Frontend agnostic (Queue, PSR-7, GRPC, etc).
  • Integrated metrics (Prometheus).
  • Works over TCP, UNIX sockets and standard pipes.
  • Automatic worker replacement and safe PHP process destruction.
  • Worker create/allocate/destroy timeouts.
  • Max jobs per worker.
  • Worker lifecycle management (controller):
    • maxMemory (graceful stop).
    • TTL (graceful stop).
    • idleTTL (graceful stop).
    • execTTL (brute, max_execution_time).
  • Payload context and body.
  • Protocol, worker and job level error management (including PHP errors).
  • Very fast (~250k rpc calls per second on Ryzen 1700X using 16 threads).
  • Integrations with Symfony, Laravel, Slim, CakePHP, Zend Expressive.
  • Application server for Spiral.
  • Automatic reloading on file changes.
  • Cross-platform support – runs under Linux and Windows (Unix sockets (AF_UNIX) supported on Windows 10).

Website: roadrunner.dev
Support: Documentation, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Spiral Scout
License: MIT license

RoadRunner is written in Go and PHP. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn PHP with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


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Read our verdict in the software roundup.

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Read our verdict in the software roundup.


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