Drupal 11.4.0 slashes database queries and boosts compression

Drupal 11.4.0 delivers its largest performance update yet, slashing database and cache lookups to a third of prior versions and halving database queries compared to Drupal 11.3.

The release also offers Brotli compression for CSS and JavaScript, typically reducing asset size by 15–25%. Translation file handling is up to 87% faster, and a new extensible native command line interface lays the groundwork for future CLI workflows.

Additional improvements include faster recipe-based site installations and options for stronger password hashing with argon2id.