LiteSpeed vs Nginx — Performance Benchmarks 2021

A comprehensive benchmark study published in 2021 shows LiteSpeed Web Server consistently outperforming Nginx across all tested workloads — particularly under high concurrency.

Benchmark Results Summary

# Test environment: 4-core, 8GB RAM server
# Test tool: wrk, Apache Bench, h2load
# Concurrency: 1000 simultaneous connections

Static files (HTML/images):
Apache:      8,500 req/sec
Nginx:       45,000 req/sec
LiteSpeed:   98,000 req/sec  ← 2.2x faster than Nginx

PHP WordPress homepage:
Apache+PHP:  800 req/sec
Nginx+FPM:   1,200 req/sec
OLS+LSPHP:   4,800 req/sec  ← 4x faster than Nginx

WordPress with cache:
Nginx+Varnish:    12,000 req/sec
LiteSpeed+LSCache: 85,000 req/sec  ← 7x faster

Why LiteSpeed is Faster

• LSAPI — custom PHP handler 40% faster than FastCGI
• Built-in cache — cache handled at server level, no separate Varnish needed
• Event-driven — similar to Nginx but with optimised PHP handling
• HTTP/3 native — QUIC support built-in from early versions

When Nginx Still Wins

• Static file serving at extreme scale (Nginx is more memory-efficient)
• Reverse proxy for non-PHP applications
• When LiteSpeed licence cost is a concern (OpenLiteSpeed is free)

Impact on Hosting Decisions

These benchmarks accelerated the adoption of LiteSpeed in shared hosting — many providers switched from Apache+Nginx to LiteSpeed to offer better performance at the same server cost.

Conclusion

For PHP-heavy workloads, LiteSpeed is the clear performance winner. Our team helps clients migrate to LiteSpeed for significant performance gains.