I wish one day people would stop using mod_php5 and start using PHP-FPM. That way we might get proper documentation and support. fastcgi_finish_request() does the neat thing of finishing the request in the user side, but continuing to do the work in the server side: http://php.net/manual/en/install.fpm.php Must be used with care in an environment that uses a fixed number of processes per pool since it may be DoS'ed.