Alternative PHP Cache (APC)
APC provides two caching mechanisms.
APC caches the opcode generated during the PHP execution cycle and then later will be able to avoid loading and parsing PHP files repeatedly.
APC also provides a key-value, object cache for PHP applications in shared memory.
Memcached
Memcached is a distributed, key-value, object cache in memory. This is similar to the object cache provided by APC but there are some important differences. It’s in-memory, while APC’s object cache is in shared memory. This will make Memcached faster, but will also require the memory allocation for it’s storage. The other major difference is that Memcached is distributed. This means that it runs across multiple servers. For example, if you’re load-balancing your application. Generally, the need for a distributed object cache is why you would use Memcached.
Varnish
Varnish is a caching HTTP reverse proxy. The reverse proxy part means that it sits between your application and the outside world. Visiting your domain will actually connect to Varnish. Varnish will then make the corresponding request to your application and then deliver it to the client. It will cache the results of these requests based on a configuration file you can write in the Varnish Configuration Language.
Varnish is neither an opcode cache like APC’s opcode cache component, nor an object cache like those in APC or Memcached. Varnish operates outside of your application and caches the entire HTTP response such as the whole HTML document returned by your application.
Varnish is extremely effective because it will cache the final resulting HTML document after all PHP or other server side processing is done. This means that when varnish delivers a page from cache, it avoids running the PHP code at all and consequently any database queries involved in generating the document. Delivering a cached page from Varnish is like delivering a static HTML file.
https://www.neonrain.com/web-cache-apc-vs-memcached-vs-varnish/