Oh PHP is hands down one of the slowest languages out there. It's just convenient because it's easy to host, but it's awful to use and it's really slow.
Here, have a chart:
In this chart, where the benchmark is calculating digits of π, Java is faster than JS, but there are cases where it's the opposite.
https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison?tab=readme-ov-file
Absolutely, it's just one aspect of it, benchmarking is always narrow in scope. Some languages may be good at some things and worse at others.