PHP is a framework. True it's not a particularly nice one, and some people build even more layers on top, but it comes with all manner of HTTP/url/DB/etc. stuff out of the box. It's also a templating language (that's what the "<?php" tags are for); although, again, not particularly great, and some people layer more abstractions on top.
I can (and have) just grabbed Rack and rolled most everything myself in Ruby and it has way less overhead and is much more performant than Rails. Ruby also has it's own templating language; ERB is part of Ruby core.
So comparing PHP to Rails is a bit apples and oranges.
If you are making a technical comparison then it needs to be at the correct layer of abstraction. If we were to compare performance of Laraval and Rails that would be a fair comparison.
If we are comparing on performance then PHP should be probably be compared to Ruby+Rack since that is sort of the lowest common denominator.
I'm not dogging on PHP here either. Even comparing at the correct level; PHP is still faster, but lets make sure we are making the right comparisons.
i was clarifying the compassion.