Why Is PHP Using So Much CPU?
PHP-FPM is pinned, response times spike, and the server CPU won't drop. It's not always the framework — it's often one hot function, a tight loop, an unindexed query, or a calculation repeated for every row.
I profile running PHP and find the exact functions and queries driving CPU, then prioritize the cheapest win.
What I Can Help With
Find what drives high CPU in PHP production.
Typical Problems
Relevant Experience
Profiled a PHP backend where CPU was pinned at 100% during peak hours. Blackfire revealed a nested loop in a product comparison function that was doing O(n²) comparisons on a 50K-row dataset. Replaced with a hashmap lookup — CPU dropped to 15%.
What Is Included
How It Works
You share profiling output plus slow-log/query timing, or I add a sampling profiler for a run. I cross-reference the CPU hotspots against the query log — if the CPU is in PHP code, I find the function; if it's in MySQL, I link it to query optimization. One focused session.
Starting from €399
CPU profiling and a written diagnosis with the fix location and expected impact. Implementation is quoted separately.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can profiling run on production?
Yes, with a sampling profiler (tideways/Blackfire) the overhead is small enough for production. I avoid Xdebug on live traffic.
What if the CPU is in the database, not PHP?
I cross-reference PHP profiling against the MySQL slow log — if the CPU is in queries, I report that and link it to MySQL optimization.
Related Services
PHP Performance Optimization
Profile and optimize PHP applications that are slow, memory-heavy or consuming too much CPU.
PHP Memory Leak Investigation
Find what causes PHP memory usage to grow until the process dies.
Slow PHP Application? I'll Find the Bottleneck
Diagnose why a PHP application is slow, no rewrite required.
MySQL Performance Optimization
Optimize MySQL queries, indexes and schema for a production workload.
Systems I've Built
Cenoskop / Levnobot
Crawler monitoring millions of products. Processing 30M products daily and comparing them.
Built and maintain the full crawling pipeline — from scraping through Elasticsearch indexing to price comparison.
Niftycent
Price intelligence engine for the US market. Processing large-scale product data.
Built the data pipeline and crawling infrastructure for large-scale US product monitoring.
AnalyticsForWebsite
Custom solution for collecting and evaluating traffic metrics with emphasis on processing speed and minimizing backend load.
Designed and built the backend for fast traffic metric collection and evaluation.
Paidshield
Chat application with end-to-end encryption.
Built the backend and encryption layer for a secure chat application.
facha.sk
Find a job or offer your services.
Built the Go backend — API, matching logic and deployment.
Not sure what's wrong?
Write what's happening and paste anything relevant — errors, logs, metrics. I'll have a look and tell you what I think.