DEV Community: Milan Felix Šulc

Vercel PHP: PHP 8.4 & PHP 8.5

Milan Felix Šulc — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:21:25 +0000

Back in the ZEIT Now days, I wrote a couple of posts about running PHP on “a frontend platform” and shipping tiny serverless endpoints next to static sites:

Fast-forward: ZEIT is now Vercel, and the community PHP runtime has matured into a pretty practical way to run PHP on Vercel Functions.

And there’s fresh news: v0.8.0 adds PHP 8.4, and v0.9.0 adds PHP 8.5 🎉

Runtime repo: https://github.com/vercel-community/php/
Announcement thread: https://community.vercel.com/t/vercel-php/31428

What shipped

vercel-php@0.8.0 → PHP 8.4.x
vercel-php@0.9.0 → PHP 8.5.x

Why you might care about PHP 8.4 / 8.5

PHP 8.4 is a major language update with features like property hooks, asymmetric visibility, DOM updates, and general performance/cleanup.

Release notes: https://www.php.net/releases/8.4/en.php

PHP 8.5 (released Nov 20, 2025) adds goodies like a built-in URI extension and the pipe operator (|>), plus other improvements.

Release notes: https://www.php.net/releases/8.5/en.php

If you’re deploying micro-APIs, webhooks, “backend-for-frontend” endpoints, or lightweight PHP apps on Vercel, being able to pin a modern runtime version is a big deal.

The runtime in one sentence

vercel-php is a community runtime that runs your PHP code inside Vercel Functions, with Composer support and a bunch of bundled extensions.

Repo: https://github.com/vercel-community/php/

Quickstart: “Hello PHP” on Vercel (PHP 8.5)

Minimal structure:

project/
├─ api/
│  └─ index.php
└─ vercel.json

api/index.php

<?php

header('content-type: application/json');

echo json_encode([
  'ok'  => true,
  'php' => PHP_VERSION,
  'sapi'=> php_sapi_name(),
]);

vercel.json (pin PHP 8.5)

{
  "functions": {
    "api/*.php": { "runtime": "vercel-php@0.9.0" }
  }
}

Deploy with the Vercel CLI or the Dashboard. Done.

If you want a canonical “works out of the box” demo, there’s also a tiny landing/demo here:

https://php.vercel.app/

Want PHP 8.4 instead?

Same setup—just change the runtime version:

{
  "functions": {
    "api/*.php": { "runtime": "vercel-php@0.8.0" }
  }
}

“Route everything to index.php” (classic app style)

If you’re adapting a small framework/router or want a single entrypoint:

{
  "functions": {
    "api/index.php": { "runtime": "vercel-php@0.9.0" }
  },
  "routes": [{ "src": "/(.*)", "dest": "/api/index.php" }]
}

Composer support (yes)

If you have dependencies:

project/
├─ api/
│  └─ index.php
├─ composer.json
└─ vercel.json

Practical tip: add a .vercelignore and ignore /vendor so you don’t upload it—let the build install deps instead.

Tuning Function limits (duration + memory)

You can configure per-function limits in vercel.json:

{
  "functions": {
    "api/*.php": {
      "runtime": "vercel-php@0.9.0",
      "memory": 1024,
      "maxDuration": 60
    }
  }
}

Note: Duration limits depend on your Vercel plan and whether features like Fluid Compute are enabled.

Docs: https://vercel.com/docs/functions/configuring-functions/duration

Overriding php.ini

Need custom INI settings? Drop a php.ini next to your handlers:

api/
├─ index.php
└─ php.ini

Example:

memory_limit=1024M
disable_functions="exec,system"

A couple of gotchas

Local dev: the runtime ecosystem historically hasn’t been perfect with vercel dev in every setup. If you hit issues, the simplest fallback is using PHP’s built-in server locally and treating Vercel as your deploy target.
Config file choice: Vercel supports vercel.json or vercel.ts (programmatic), but you typically use one configuration approach per project. Docs: https://vercel.com/docs/projects/project-configuration

Upgrading from older pins

If you’re already using vercel-php, upgrading is often just changing the runtime string:

vercel-php@0.7.x → vercel-php@0.8.0 (PHP 8.4)
vercel-php@0.8.x → vercel-php@0.9.0 (PHP 8.5)

Then:

make sure your composer.json PHP constraint matches (e.g. ^8.4 / ^8.5)
run tests
deploy to a Preview URL and hit the endpoints

Deploy Static Frontend + PHP Files Using ZEIT Now

Milan Felix Šulc — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 09:10:12 +0000

I am quite a fan of ZEIT company and even more of their tool called Now.

I consider myself mainly as PHP developer, but I also like JavaScript. In these days static site generators are raising and I am totally into it.

So how to take advantage of static frontend but with dynamic backend written in PHP?

Since November 2019 it's simple as possible with ZEIT Now.

Milan Felix Šulc

@xf3l1x

@rauchg @drk @rjs @ionos_com @zeithq Hi @rjs.

Deploy static frontend with PHP files to @zeithq is pretty easy. We're using it daily.

I've prepared for you a demo. 🎄

You can reach me anytime. 👨🏻‍💻

bit.ly/2RF8cbh

12:17 PM - 10 Dec 2019

0 1

👀 https://imgur.com/V7CcInl

Minimal project structure looks like this, you gonna need only 3 files.

project/
├── api/
│   ├── index.php
├── now.json
└── index.html

File index.html contains static frontend.

<html>
<head></head>
<body>

#
# Fetch data from /api/index.php using Fetch API
#

</body>
</html>

File api/index.php contains dynamic data or expose API endpoint.

<?php

header('conten-type: application/json');
echo json_encode(['tech' => 'ZEIT Now']);

File now.json setup deployment.

{
  "functions": {
    "api/index.php": {
      "runtime": "now-php@0.0.7"
    }
  }
}

Finally you can call now command and see what happened.

View this example on Github.

Bleeding Edge PHP on ZEIT Now

Milan Felix Šulc — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 16:11:03 +0000

Today I would like to show you ZEIT Now platform. Well, you've probably heard about it. There are many blogposts about this awesome piece of technology (https://dev.to/search?q=zeit%20now).

But, I have some good news for PHP devs. Since June (06/2019) I am working on the enhanced PHP builders for ZEIT Now.

These builders support:

multiple PHP versions (7.2.20, 7.3.7, 7.4.0alpha2) 🚀
- official PHP builder is 7.1.22
multiple running modes (server, cgi, cli, fpm) 🧙‍♂️
- just pick whatever you like
many preinstalled PHP extensions 📦
install dependencies via Composer 🤩

The updated builders you can find at the Github juicyfx/now-php and I would appreciate any feedback.

How to test it? Take a look at examples

How to deploy under 1 minute? Create index.php and now.json in your project's folder. If you're not familiar with ZEIT Now, take a look at official website.

<?php 

phpinfo();

{
    "version": 2,
    "builds": [
      { "src": "old.php", "use": "@now/php" },
      { "src": "new.php", "use": "now-php" }
    ]
}

Yep, that's all. And now call now. 🤓

You should saw something like that.

At the end, some examples.

official - https://php.now.sh/
phpinfo - https://php.jfx.cz/
extensions - https://php.jfx.cz/ext/
ini - https://php.jfx.cz/ini/
JSON API - https://php.jfx.cz/api/users.php
test - https://php.jfx.cz/test.php

I'm also testing Caddy server with FPM and Bref.sh. There are many features you might be looking for.

PHP builder was separated from zeit/now-builders to solo repository - https://github.com/juicyfx/now-php. Take a look.

Happy testing,
Felix