Developers generally report no significant performance impact at runtime. In some benchmarks, encoded files even execute faster than raw source because they use compiled bytecode.
To run these encrypted files on a server, the administrator must install the appropriate . This extension decrypts the code on-the-fly, executes it, and ensures the PHP engine never sees the original human-readable source code. Ioncube 13 Decoder
The demand for decoders is driven by several distinct user groups, each with different motivations: each with different motivations: