Apache+mod_php so slow - php

Question

I have a problem setting up my Apache server with mod_php. I have a website whose index.php page is generated in ~200ms. But Apache serves it in about 1.5sec. Why is this slowdown taking place?
If needed, my /etc/apache2/ports.conf file is:
Listen 80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName mysite.local
ServerAlias www.mysite.local
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPass / http://localhost:9999/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:9999/
</VirtualHost>
My file /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite.local.conf is:
Listen 9999
User max
Group max
<VirtualHost *:9999>
ServerName 127.0.0.1:9999
DocumentRoot /home/max/www/mysite.local/www/html/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /home/max/www/mysite.local/www>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
#Order allow,deny
#Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog /home/max/www/mysite.local/logs/error.log
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /home/max/www/mysite.local/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
My main question is why is this so slow and how can make it faster? I have tested putting the index.php content into a plain html file, and it is served in ~10ms. so the problem is probably with mod_php? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

A reason could be that apache checks for .htaccess files recursively within each directory of the root for each request. apache is used very widely but not very fast or even optimized.
I definitely would suggest an nginx server combined with php-fpm. The configuration is very straight forward and if you're familiar with apache, you should not have problems using nginx. How To: https://tecadmin.net/setup-nginx-php-fpm-on-ubuntu-20-04/