PHP 7.4 did reach the end of life on December 3, 2020. This means that after this date, PHP 7.4 was no longer supported by the PHP development team. Although security patches were provided until November 28, 2022, this date has since passed.
Updating to 8.1 provides many benefits over PHP 7.4, such as increased performance, bug fixes, and security enhancements. Keep in mind that PHP 8.0 is end of life as well and no longer supported it will stop receiving security updates as of November 2023, so it is important to update your PHP version to PHP 8.1 sooner rather than later to avoid any possible security issues.
As many still use older PHP versions, here is a reminder of when they did get end-of-life as well:
PHP 5.6: January 1, 2017
PHP 7.0: July 3, 2017
PHP 7.1: January 7, 2018
PHP 7.2: November 24, 2018
PHP 7.3: June 3, 2019
PHP 7.4: December 3, 2020
PHP 8.0: November 2022 (Security updates November 2023)
PHP 7.4 and 8.0 may be no longer supported, but that doesn’t mean that PHP is on its way out. In fact, PHP 8.1 offers many improvements over PHP 7.4, including increased performance, bug fixes, and security enhancements.
If you’re still using an older PHP version, it’s important to update to PHP 8.1 sooner rather than later to avoid any possible security issues. PHP 5.6 reached the end of life in 2017, PHP 7.0 in 2017, PHP 7.1 in 2018, PHP 7.2 in 2019, and PHP 7.3 in 2020. PHP 8.0 will reach the end of life in 2022 (security updates will stop in 2023), so it’s important to make the switch now to avoid any potential problems down the road.
For the latest updates see: https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
