Originally for JavaScript, but they offer a PHP variant.
Features:
Pros: More aggressive than average.
Cons: Can break include/require paths if not careful.
A good online tool will ask for your target PHP version (e.g., 7.4, 8.1, 8.2). Obfuscation that works on PHP 5.6 might break on PHP 8.x due to strict typing changes. php obfuscator online
Pro Tip: Avoid tools that rely solely on eval() or gzinflate(). These are easily detected and reversed by free online "unobfuscators."
Common transformations applied by online tools: Originally for JavaScript, but they offer a PHP variant
Before we focus on the "online" aspect, we must understand obfuscation.
Obfuscation is the act of transforming human-readable source code into a syntactically equivalent version that is extremely difficult for humans to understand. It is not encryption (you can’t "decrypt" it like a password), nor is it compilation. It is a "mangling" process. Pros: More aggressive than average
A PHP Obfuscator takes code like this:
function calculatePrice($price, $tax)
return $price + ($price * $tax);
echo calculatePrice(100, 0.2);
And turns it into something like this:
$a="\x66\x75\x6e\x63\x74\x69\x6f\x6e";$b='\x63\x61\x6c\x63...'; $_=$a($b); $_($price, $tax);
Or more commonly, a jumble of variable names ($a1, $b2, $c3), encoded strings, and logic that is impossible to reverse-engineer quickly.
PHP Obfuscator Online — Protect Your PHP Source Code