Does Laravel Octane close the performance gap with Node.js?

Largely yes for typical web workloads. Laravel Octane (using FrankenPHP or RoadRunner) keeps the application in memory between requests instead of bootstrapping the framework on every request, which removes most of the per request overhead that historically made PHP feel slower than Node.js. For request response web applications, Octane brings Laravel performance close to or competitive with Node.js. Where Node.js retains an edge is the specific case of many concurrent long lived connections, where the event loop architecture is fundamentally suited and Octane does not change the underlying request model.