RoadRunner is an open-source (MIT licensed) high-performance PHP application server, process manager written in Go and powered with plugins ❤️. It supports running as a service with the ability to extend its functionality on a per-project basis with plugins.

RoadRunner features a range of plugins, including HTTP(S)/2/3 and fCGI servers that are compatible with PSR-7/PSR-17 standards. This is just one of its many capabilities. It serves as an effective alternative to the traditional Nginx+FPM setup, providing improved performance and more flexibility. Its extensive plugin options go far beyond just HTTP(S)/2/3 and fCGI servers, offering a broad range of functionalities:

• Queue drivers: RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS, Beanstalk, NATS, In-Memory.
• KV drivers: Redis, Memcached, BoltDB, In-Memory.
• OpenTelemetry protocol support (gRPC, http, jaeger).
• Workflow engine via Temporal.
• gRPC server. For increased speed, the protobuf extension can be used.
• HTTP(S)/2/3 and fCGI servers features automatic TLS management, 103 Early Hints support and middleware like: Static, Headers, gzip, prometheus (metrics), send (x-sendfile), OTEL, proxy_ip_parser, etc.
• Embedded distribute lock plugin which manages access to shared resources.
• Metrics server (you might easily expose your own).
• WebSockets and Broadcast via Centrifugo server.
• Systemd-like services manager with auto-restarts, execution time limiter, etc.
• Production-ready.
• And more 😉

Official Website | Documentation | Forum | Release schedule | Ask RoadRunner Guru

The easiest way to get the latest RoadRunner version is to use one of the pre-built release binaries, which are available for OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows. Instructions for using these binaries are on the GitHub releases page.

To get the roadrunner binary file you can use our docker image: ghcr.io/roadrunner-server/roadrunner:2025.X.X (more information about image and tags can be found here).

FROM ghcr.io/roadrunner-server/roadrunner:2025.X.X AS roadrunner
FROM php:8.3-cli
COPY --from=roadrunner /usr/bin/rr /usr/local/bin/rr
# USE THE RR

Configuration located in the .rr.yaml file (full sample):

You can also install RoadRunner automatically using the command shipped with the composer package, run:

composer require spiral/roadrunner-cli
./vendor/bin/rr get-binary

Server binary will be available at the root of your project.

Note

PHP's extensions php-curl and php-zip are required to download RoadRunner automatically. PHP's extensions php-sockets need to be installed to run roadrunner. Check with php --modules your installed extensions.

wget https://github.com/roadrunner-server/roadrunner/releases/download/v2025.X.X/roadrunner-2025.X.X-linux-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i roadrunner-2025.X.X-linux-amd64.deb

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/roadrunner-server/roadrunner/master/download-latest.sh | sh

brew install roadrunner

choco install roadrunner

Configuration can be located in .rr.yaml file (full sample):

version: '3'
rpc:
  listen: tcp://127.0.0.1:6001
server:
  command: "php worker.php"
http:
  address: "0.0.0.0:8080"
logs:
  level: error

Read more in Documentation.

<?php
use Spiral\RoadRunner;
use Nyholm\Psr7;
include "vendor/autoload.php";
$worker = RoadRunner\Worker::create();
$psrFactory = new Psr7\Factory\Psr17Factory();
$worker = new RoadRunner\Http\PSR7Worker($worker, $psrFactory, $psrFactory, $psrFactory);
while ($req = $worker->waitRequest()) {
    try {
        $rsp = new Psr7\Response();
        $rsp->getBody()->write('Hello world!');
        $worker->respond($rsp);
    } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        $worker->getWorker()->error((string)$e);
    }
}

To run application server:

$ ./rr serve -c .rr.yaml

The MIT License (MIT). Please see LICENSE for more information. Maintained by Spiral Scout.

Thanks to all the people who already contributed!