In terms of popularity, PHP is more widely used than Ruby on Rails. This is because of the fact that PHP has been in use for over two decades, whereas, Ruby on Rails was introduced just a decade ago. Apart from their evolution, the difference in their popularity is also based on the type that they are built upon. However, Ruby on Rails has started gaining a lot of popularity as more developers are being attracted to it and have been able to fulfil various personal and business objectives.

PHP is a server-side scripting language that is particularly designed for developing websites. Its code is embedded into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and is also used in combination with many web template systems, web content management systems (CMS) and web frameworks to name a few. On the other hand, Ruby on Rails is a server-side web application framework that is written in Ruby programming language, which in turn is dynamic, interpreted, reflective and object-oriented.

PHP offers a large number of tools and editors as compared to Ruby on Rails. The number of tools used by PHP cater to benchmarking, profiling and debugging web applications that are part of the process and PHP basically succeeds in having more options than Ruby on Rails. For Ruby on Rails, there are several libraries that are designed to work such as Workling, Starling and Resque etc., that help developers design applications and execute processes or carry out tasks.

Both Ruby on Rails and PHP are scalable. However, there are still few differences between the two in that the amount of resources Ruby on Rails used versus PHP, issues may arise in their scalability, especially in the application’s life cycle, which includes the design. The situation becomes very different when you go from wanting to scale to need to scale. When it comes to scaling a website, there are plenty of resources written for PHP developers, while there are less resources for Ruby on Rails developers.

Generally, speed and performance does have a certain impact on both PHP and Ruby on Rails languages. However, Ruby on Rails usually consumes more resources than PHP, thereby, causing performance issues. Thus, with the given performance issues, both languages have taken steps to help reduce the slowness that occurs in applications which are used on an everyday basis. Both languages have several run-times and core run-times, such as MRI for Ruby on Rails and Zend Engine for PHP.

When it comes to hosting web applications that are built on Ruby on Rails framework, the cost can go up very quickly. The individual will have a hard time finding hosting that supports Ruby on Rails applications and the big brand names does not come at a cheap price. However, almost all hosting services that provide hosting to Ruby on Rails applications, will also provide quite the same services for PHP applications.

Because PHP has been around for a long time, their community base is much larger than that of Ruby on Rails. The developers of PHP have abundant resources online. However, there have been initiatives in both Ruby on Rails and PHP communities to create relying resources online as much of these have become either outdated or appear having too many technical errors. PHP community are more focused towards providing support for installation, coding practices, multi-languages, testing, security etc., while Ruby on Rails community has a large selection of professional video content and podcast.