I know it&#x27;s been mentioned above, but PHP is very much not slow on its own.  On that particular benchmark it&#x27;s the highest interpreted language on the list (same with single query, fortunes and data updates).  In fact, despite some atrocious language design, speed hasn&#x27;t been a problem in a long time.  And that&#x27;s just PHP5, PHP7 offers claims of 100% speedup, not to mention HHVM.<p>I would wager that the typical bottlenecks are where the slowdowns are happening, and your hints about the # and types of queries would be my first guess.