# NoiseByNorthwest/php-spx

A simple & straight-to-the-point PHP profiling extension with its built-in web UI

Repository: https://github.com/NoiseByNorthwest/php-spx
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/php-spx
Language: C
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: php, profiler, tracer, php-extension, visualization, flamegraph, reverse-engineering, statistical-profiling, data-visualization, performance-analysis
Last push: 2026-08-19T22:27:12+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 74/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 28, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3361, "days_push": 14, "days_rel": 323, "gap_med": 96, "n_releases_24m": 6}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2629, forks 104 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:05.538800+00:00)

## What it is
SPX is a PHP profiling extension written in C that collects function-level performance metrics (time, memory, I/O) with full call stack context. It ships with a built-in web UI featuring interactive timeline, flat profile, and flamegraph visualizations.

## Use cases
- profile slow PHP scripts
- find performance bottlenecks in PHP web requests
- generate flamegraphs for PHP applications
- profile long-running PHP CLI scripts
- analyze memory usage of PHP code
- trace millions of PHP function calls with a timeline
- self-hosted PHP profiling without SaaS

## When to choose
- you need zero-instrumentation profiling of PHP apps via an environment variable or web toggle
- you want timeline or flamegraph analysis that preserves full call stacks (unlike Xhprof)
- you require profiling data to stay on your own infrastructure
- you need to profile both web requests and CLI scripts

## When to avoid
- you need profiling on platforms other than GNU/Linux, macOS, or FreeBSD
- you need continuous production APM with alerting and dashboards rather than on-demand profiling
- your PHP version is outside 5.4-8.5 or your architecture is not x86-64/ARM64

## Facets
- artifact type: plugin
- maturity: active
- function: monitoring, benchmarking, data-visualization, developer-tools
- domain: performance, developer-tools, web-development, data-visualization
- platform: php, cli
- tags: profiler, php-extension, flamegraph, tracing, statistical-profiling, web-ui, self-hosted, linux, macos, web-server

## Member repositories
- NoiseByNorthwest/php-spx (main) score 74

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:05.538800+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:19:39.578846+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/NoiseByNorthwest/php-spx (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:05.538800+00:00, sha d3e99bbf2543)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.