How to Check PHP Version (Apache, Nginx and CLI)

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a popular programming language generally used for web development. It was originally developed by the Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in the year 1994. It can be used either via the command line or used with popular web servers like Apache or Nginx. Apache has a PHP module to directly run PHP files but Nginx required a PHP-FPM package to work with PHP files.

This tutorial will help you to check the PHP version installed on your system. Also, what is the active version of PHP on the command line as well as the check PHP version used by Apache or Nginx? As we can install multiple PHP versions on a single system, it can be the there are different version’s active on CLI and Web servers.

Check PHP Version (CLI)

By default, there can be one default PHP version that can use with standard binary. To check the PHP version currently active on the command line, execute the following command on the terminal:

php -v 

Output 
PHP 7.4.8 (cli) (built: Jul 13 2020 16:45:28) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.4.8, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

On Ubuntu and Debian systems, you can also access another version by pointing their versions like: php7.2 or php7.3 etc.

• How to Install PHP on Ubuntu 22.04
• How to Install PHP on RHEL/CentOS Stream 9
• How to Install PHP on Debian 12

Check PHP Version (Apache/Nginx)

This is fine that, the current active PHP version on the command line is different than the version used by the Apache or Nginx web servers. It’s also possible that two virtual hosts can use different-2 PHP versions by using PHP-FPM.

So, to check the currently active version for Apache or Nginx, navigate to the document root of the website to which you want to check the PHP version. For example, my document root is “/var/www/html”:

cd /var/www/html 

Then create and edit a PHP script file in your favorite text editor:

nano phpinfo.php 

And, add the following content to the files. Here we used built-in phpinfo() function, which prints the active PHP version details:

Press “CTRL +X” and hit Enter button. Then press ‘Y’ and again hit Enter to save and exit from text editor.

Next, open a web browser and access `https://localhost/phpinfo.php` URL. Update localhost with the IP address or the configured domain name on the system checking php version.

https://localhost/phpinfo.php

The output will show you all the details related to active PHP along with the PHP version. It will show you the values of the PHP variables, a list of enabled PHP modules along with their version and other details.