Benchmark

How long custos and other PHP tools take on real projects, and how much memory they need. The benchmark workflow refreshes these numbers every week, with the latest release of every tool and project.

Different tools, different jobs

Type checkers infer much more than custos, linters mostly check style, and fixers rewrite code. Compare times within a kind, and read finding counts only as a sign that a tool did its work: each counts what its own rules look for.

Measured on 2026-11-08 on linux/amd64, AMD EPYC 7763 64-Core Processor, 4 cores, 16 GB of memory, with PHP 8.4.27. Each time is the median of 3 runs.

guzzle

guzzle/guzzle at 8.3.1, 74 PHP files.

Tool	Kind	Version	Time	vs custos	Peak memory	Findings
Mago analyze	analyzer	1.59.0	0.21 s	0.3×	211 MB	584
custos analyse	analyzer	0.1.10-3-ga032132c	0.62 s	1.0×	98 MB	48
Phan	analyzer	6.0.11	1.47 s	2.4×	223 MB	281
PHPStan	analyzer	2.3.5	4.79 s	7.7×	313 MB	50
Psalm	analyzer	7.1.0	5.36 s	8.7×	448 MB	172
Mago lint	linter	1.59.0	0.10 s	0.2×	163 MB	846
PHP_CodeSniffer	linter	4.0.4	1.02 s	1.7×	96 MB	720
custos fix	fixer	0.1.10-3-ga032132c	0.56 s	1.0×	100 MB	25
PHP-CS-Fixer	fixer	3.95.29	1.69 s	3.0×	157 MB	0
Rector	fixer	2.8.4	8.55 s	15×	498 MB	26

composer

composer/composer at 2.11.1, 321 PHP files.

Tool	Kind	Version	Time	vs custos	Peak memory	Findings
Mago analyze	analyzer	1.59.0	0.73 s	0.2×	231 MB	5050
custos analyse	analyzer	0.1.10-3-ga032132c	3.40 s	1.0×	187 MB	757
Phan	analyzer	6.0.11	5.71 s	1.7×	547 MB	2238
PHPStan	analyzer	2.3.5	11.6 s	3.4×	820 MB	242
Psalm	analyzer	7.1.0	19.0 s	5.6×	1.1 GB	1198
Mago lint	linter	1.59.0	0.21 s	0.06×	189 MB	4757
PHP_CodeSniffer	linter	4.0.4	3.01 s	0.9×	105 MB	10174
custos fix	fixer	0.1.10-3-ga032132c	3.23 s	1.0×	201 MB	511
PHP-CS-Fixer	fixer	3.95.29	6.80 s	2.1×	162 MB	320
Rector	fixer	2.8.4	14.2 s	4.4×	1.9 GB	138

laravel

laravel/framework at v13.40.0, 1746 PHP files.

Tool	Kind	Version	Time	vs custos	Peak memory	Findings
Mago analyze	analyzer	1.59.0	1.13 s	0.1×	392 MB	21385
custos analyse	analyzer	0.1.10-3-ga032132c	8.29 s	1.0×	654 MB	10997
Phan	analyzer	6.0.11	20.0 s	2.4×	1.7 GB	9102
PHPStan	analyzer	2.3.5	27.7 s	3.3×	1.6 GB	3826
Psalm	analyzer	7.1.0	69.6 s	8.4×	3.6 GB	7040
Mago lint	linter	1.59.0	0.31 s	0.04×	197 MB	9047
PHP_CodeSniffer	linter	4.0.4	8.61 s	1.0×	132 MB	9854
custos fix	fixer	0.1.10-3-ga032132c	8.47 s	1.0×	692 MB	4617
PHP-CS-Fixer	fixer	3.95.29	13.9 s	1.6×	180 MB	446
Rector	fixer	2.8.4	34.6 s	4.1×	3.5 GB	1325

Features

What each tool offers besides speed. A tool that lacks a feature may still get it from a third-party plugin; the table lists what the tool itself provides.

Feature	custos	PHPStan	Psalm	Phan	Mago	PHP_CodeSniffer	PHP-CS-Fixer	Rector
Written in	Go	PHP	PHP	PHP	Rust	PHP	PHP	PHP
Runs without PHP	✓	—	—	—	✓	—	—	—
Type checking	— infers types for its rules	✓	✓	✓	✓ analyze	—	—	—
Taint analysis	✓ across files and into vendor/	—	✓ --taint-analysis	—	partial: superglobals echoed directly	—	—	—
Automatic fixes	✓ custos fix	partial: --fix, experimental	✓ psalter	partial: --automatic-fix, few issues	✓ --fix	✓ phpcbf	✓	✓
Formatting	—	—	—	—	✓ fmt	✓ phpcbf	✓	—
Language server	✓ custos lsp	—	✓	✓	— planned	—	—	—
MCP server for AI agents	✓ custos mcp	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Baseline	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	—	—	—
Custom rules	—	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓ sniffs	✓	✓
SARIF output	✓	—	✓	—	✓	—	—	—

Checked against each tool's documentation on 2026-11-08; linked cells cite it.

Method

• Every tool analyzes the project's source directories with its own configuration from bench/configs, after the project's dependencies are installed, so that analyzers can resolve vendor symbols.
• Each run starts from an empty cache, after a warm-up run that fills the operating system's file cache. Tools use their default parallelism, or every core when they have to be told.
• Peak memory sums the resident memory of the tool's processes, including its parallel workers.
• Findings: problems reported by analyzers and linters, edits custos fix would apply, and files other fixers would change. Fixers run in dry-run mode.
• vs custos divides a tool's time by the time of the custos command of the same kind (custos analyse, or custos fix for fixers).
• Run it yourself with make compare; the tools, versions and projects are listed in bench/competitors.json.