What are the best PHP frameworks?

With migrations, powerful and intuitive Eloquent CRUD, resource routing, and simple JSON response out of the box, a complete backend can be written in hours. See More

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Top Pro

Good for building RESTful APIs

Top Con

ORM only supports SQL

You can use other data stores by rolling your own. But to do so requires a bit of experience and defeats some of Laravel's simplicity by removing the Eloquent ORM. See More

DecentDionysus's Experience

Laravel is the best PHP framework that I've ever used personally. See More

Top Pro

It includes its own ORM

Laravel's Eloquent ORM is a simple and fast Object-Relational Mapping which helps with organizing the application's database. See More

Top Con

Poor performance

InventiveRhadamanthus's Experience

Just an awesome framwork See More

Top Pro

Allows for configuration and extending

Laravel allows for free configuration and does not force developers to use a single project structure, instead they can change it to how they wish. It also uses Composer as a dependency manager which allows developers to extend their Laravel application with additional libraries. See More

Top Con

Slow Bootstrap

Laravel has two primary configuration files for it's bootstrapping: https://github.com/laravel/laravel/blob/master/app/Http/Kernel.php https://github.com/laravel/laravel/blob/master/config/app.php The Kernel defines some global middleware that execute on every request, while app.php registers several service providers which go through two booting phases: Registration, which is the first to happen Boot, which is executed after all the other service providers are registered. Another reason why Laravel's bootstrapping is slow is because Laravel sits on top of Symfony's HTTPFoundation, which is relatively heavyweight. See More

ExcitedWurugag's Experience

Minha experiência foi positiva, apesar de ser iniciante no PHP quando o conheci. Ainda não vi motivos para trocar de framework, exceto pela falta de modularização nativa. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

Laravel's documentation is thorough and very good. It covers everything and is very helpful to experienced and new users alike. See More

Top Con

Not so modular

Re-brands and integrates badly well-known packages. See More

AmiableAshnan's Experience

Very slow and bloated See More

Top Pro

Open Source

The Laravel framework is open source and licensed under the MIT license. See More

Top Con

Follows bad design practices

Uses bad practices, like Singletons, Magic models, Middleware. See More

Gaurangkumar Parmar's Experience

it is fast, flexible, easy and secure See More

Top Pro

Auth class

Laravel comes with Authentication capabilities and a fully-powered Auth class out of the box. For passwords it uses bcrypt. See More

Top Con

One-man show

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Laracast has a lot of information and tutorials... See More

Top Con

Bloated

The problem with frameworks that take this approach is that they quickly become too bloated. This leads to slow performance, but also maintenance problems, more attack vectors, etc. It also leads to more updates which means you need to constantly stay in the loop and maintain things. See More

Top Pro

Strong community leadership

All the major contributors in the community are well known because they're actively engaged and easy to reach out to. See More

Top Con

Expensive

To really be part of Laravel you must buy in to the Laravel products. Laravel Nova - $99 per website. Laravel Forge -$19 per month. See More

Top Pro

Handles event queuing

Laravel supports event queuing and it does so in a very simple way. To create an event that should be queued just run: php artisan handler:event SendPurchaseConfirmation --event=PodcastWasPurchased --queued This creates a handler that implements the Illuminate\Contracts\Queue\ShouldBeQueued interface. Now when this handler is called it will automatically be queued by the event dispatcher. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

While a lot of times you can write things in plain PHP, it will hinder you down the line when you want to use core features and find that you have to rewrite code which then causes issues throughout the app. Documentation is good, but you need to know what you are looking for and practical examples are non-existent. Many features have been updated throughout the versions in such a short time that tutorials you find online are confusing to sort through outdated tutorials and guides that no longer work or have been depreciated. See More

Top Pro

The documentation is thoroughly rationalized

This feature assists in finding necessary information if needed and quickly study the platform. See More

Top Con

Hard-to-use model properties

You need to check all model properties in database to know it exists, or declare all them manually. See More

Top Pro

Fast developing

Top Con

Slow performance

Bootstrap process is slow. Reliance on Composer for autoloading is partially to blame. Symfony core underneath is also part to blame. Bloat is to blame too (lots and lots of things come with Laravel out of the box which obviously increases its footprint). Note this performance concern may not be a huge issue or deal breaker for many, but it's measurable and considerable when compared to other PHP frameworks. See More

Top Pro

Comes with an excellent built-in ORM

Laravel's Eloquent ORM is a simple and fast Object-Relational Mapping which helps with organizing the application's database. It supports the most popular databases (MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, etc.) out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Gulp tasks in the form of Laravel Elixir

In Laravel 5.0 they added Laravel Elixir, which provides an API for using Gulp tasks for Laravel applications. Elixir supports several CSS preprocessors and even some test tools. But it's still in the early stages of development and it will be developed even further in the following releases. With more methods and more Gulp tasks supported. See More

Top Pro

Great Community

Laravel has a great and big community See More

Top Pro

Great Ecosystem

Great Ecosystem with SAAS Services: Laravel Forge, Laravel Envoyer, Laravel Telescope, Laravel Horizon, etc. See More

Top Pro

Can use Symfony components

Laravel uses many libraries built for the Symfony PHP framework. Many of these libraries are well-built and have been tested by users before. Since the point of using a web framework is to shorten development time and to avoid reinventing the wheel for problems that have already been solved, then it's logical for a framework to use libraries already built to solve problems that have already been solved. See More

Top Pro

Easy to write web apps with authentication

Laravel comes with Authentication capabilities and a fully-powered Auth class out of the box. For passwords it uses bcrypt. See More

Top Pro

Extremely powerful template system

Laravel has a powerful template system called Blade. It's quite similar to Twig or Moustache with lots of curly braces but the real power comes from the usage of PHP code directly in the view. Blade templates compile directly to raw PHP and are processed in the server when a request is made. See More

Top Pro

Gives developers a great degree of freedom in how they set up their project structure

Laravel allows for free configuration and does not force developers to use a single project structure, instead they can change it to how they wish. See More

Top Pro

Built in webpack and Vue.js 2

Top Pro

Easy to build dockerized container for Enterprise App

Laravel source code base is tiny with packed features, which makes it ideal to build micro service based container. You can build your own Docker containers and host app in single docker container that also provides PHP and NGINX web server. See More

Documentation is clear and concise. Gets you up and running in half a day. See More

Fat-Free Framework

Top Pro

Quick and easy to learn

Top Con

Messy codestyle

JovialPerkunas's Experience

Fat Free Framework in conjunction with RedbeanPHP is just a dream and so much faster to implement than any other framework. dot. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.4+

Default Template Engine:custom

Top Pro

Lightweight without losing functionality

The framework is very lightweight and fast. Even though it's pretty light, it still does not lose a lot of functionality. See More

Top Con

The default template engine is "home made"

MotivatedPapsukkal's Experience

License is GPL. This is fine if you plan on keeping your application open sourced, however down the road, if you plan on selling your application, you can get in trouble. See More

Top Pro

Good performance (excluding c-compiled php frameworks)

F3 performs very well so it clearly won't be the bottleneck. See the latest TechEmpower benchmarks here. If to exclude Yaf and Phalcon from the results (which are C-compiled extensions), then F3 ranks as the 2nd most performant PHP framework behind MicroMVC. Actually, if to exclude Phalcon and Yaf, F3 performs best in 4 categories out of 6! As you pointed it out, it performs particularly well in the "multiple queries" category, even better than the C-compiled extensions! See More

Top Con

Lack of tutorials for beginners

There is a fantastic user guide that explains all the functions, but there are very few updated tutorials (video or written) on the internet to teach a newbie how to build a functional application using F3. See More

KindMengPo's Experience

Très bonne performance. I love Fat-Free See More

Top Pro

Open source

Fat-Free Framework is free and open source and is released under the GNU Public License. See More

Top Con

Lack of video tutorials

While there is a great user guide, compared to other established PHP frameworks, there is a relative shortage of video and written step-by-step tutorials for newbies to learn this framework. See More

Antonio Diaz's Experience

Very simple, straight forward and very stable, great PDO connection for the most popular databases like MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle (nobody is perfect) & SQLite and the one and only MongoDB. I'm using all three relational databases at the same time and the performance is solid. F3 gives you the structure and standardization without sacrificing the flexibility of other technologies like JavaScript. You can be up and running in no time!! See More

Top Pro

Folder structure

Freedom to choose which is the best folder structure for your project, easily adaptable to any development. See More

Top Con

Community is a bit small, so if you get stuck you have trouble finding answers via google

Searching for "fat-free minification" on google sometimes doesn't give you the "right" answer. See More

ExceptionalDazbog's Experience

Codeigniter, cakephp, laravel, symfony, phalconphp, pop mv See More

Top Pro

Use your own classes

The idea of a PHP framework is that you can harness the code written by people at a higher and more competent level than yourself. For instance, if writing code for a forum it's great if you can use a simple AUTH plugin to authenticate returning users. This is the case with fatfree & its a piece of cake; obviously you only want to write one head & one footer and use them with every main section of content (views) ; you can do this easy in routes by chain loading . One other thing if you an write some basic Object Orientated PHP then you will want to try using your own classes ; put classes say even something trivial like Slug.php(for auto create of slug link for blogs) in Models/API autoload in a route and instantiating in index.php is as easy as this: $slimy = new Slug(); $toSlug = $slimy->convertToSlug($theirTopicGotFromForm ); //$toSlug then is used by inserted in to database. See More

Top Con

Default ORM is missing some features but there is RedBean PHP

The default ORM for this framework is missing some features such as joins. But it's important to keep in mind that it's a small plugin, only 23KB in size which still can be replaced with a larger ORM if needed. An alternative is the drop-in f3-cortex ORM which is popular and supported by the community. It supports Joins and much more. See here. See More

FearlessGaia's Experience

Beginer friendly See More

Top Pro

Easy to understand

Even non-expert PHP programmers can find this framework simple enough to understand yet advanced enough to get their projects running in short time. See More

Top Con

Backward incompatible within minor version

There are serious incompatibilities even between minor versions (eg. between 3.6.0 and 3.6.2). Developers exhibit complete lack of understanding what is versioning of product (and which changes should be integrated in which versions), which makes this framework unsuitable for serious work. Development is slow, stable versions are rare and not treated seriously. See More

Top Pro

Easy & extendable templating

Output HTML , Email or any number of possible text output options with an easy to configure Template class, and if you need to add your own markup to the template you can easily extend it to fit your application needs. See More

Top Con

ORM capabilities

Adding this capability as native will be great, but for not too complicated applications works very well. See More

Top Pro

Flexible routing engine

Routing is simple easy to use and can be stashed in a config file. There's a pragmatic feel to the whole design that is suited to the rapid development of prototype and test environments that can be modified and deployed at a later date. The fact that you use the routes from the command line is a useful feature. See More

Top Con

Updates

Error tracing is poor and updates are slow. See More

Top Pro

No composer, curl or dependency injectors

You download a zip file and use it by placing require(); statement. No need to use composer, curl or any dependency injector which sometime become a great pain. See More

Top Pro

Very stable

You know those frameworks that have updated 5 times during your own development phase? Well, F3 sees one or two updates per year. Never had any issues updating or upgrading. F3 just works. See More

Top Pro

Highly modular

Virtually everything is modular. You can choose which modules and libraries to include and to keep the framework as lightweight as possible. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

After you download the framework it is very simple to get an app up and running very quickly. Makes it easy for newer PHP and web app developers to start using a MVC framework. See More

Top Pro

Simple and easy localization/ multilanguage

Define dictionary files for multiple languages and easily maintain localized versions of the project without much extra effort and no extra code. See More

Top Pro

Multiple view engines

Default view engine is superb and can also work with varieties of PHP view engines including Twig. See More

Top Pro

No model files to maintain

When you make changes to the database, you do not have to make changes to any type of configuration file for the framework to know about the changes. Simply change the database and start using the changes in your code. See More

Top Pro

Very little not included by default

In a framework that's so small, it puts the rest to shame. See More

Top Pro

Helpful, supportive and responsive community

The maintainers and community around Fat Free are very friendly and helpful, answering questions quickly and providing help as needed via Google Group, GitHub and Stack Overflow. See More

Top Pro

Autoload and support of namespaces

Top Pro

Shortened development time

Building an application that processes a URL (display a page, submit a form, invoke Ajax, etc.) requires very little code and can be achieved very quickly. Allows developers to focus on the application itself and not the plumbing. See More

Top Pro

No canned coding/directory structure

Freedom to structure your projects' directories and codes as you wish. F3 is a non-opinionated framework : you are entirely free to use the files/API/assets structure that you love. Following a minimalistic approach, F3 tends to avoid adding code and structure that are not strictly necessary, while focusing on what really matters : coding your solution; actually you learn F3 while implementing/coding your project/webapp See More

Top Pro

Very good error handling

You could define your own error-pages, you have debugging levels and you get the information you need to debug your code. See More

Top Pro

Self-documenting code

Top Pro

ORM supports sql, nosql, and jig

Top Pro

Vibrant community behind the framework

The community is responsive and helpful in clarifying the aspects of the framework. See More

Top Pro

Simple development setup

Top Pro

Simple development set up

Top Pro

FREE structure

Top Pro

Comprehensive documentation and API reference

Concise and to the point documentation. Includes many examples and complete API reference here. See More

Top Pro

Unit testing toolkit

Top Pro

Self documenting code

Since the framework is and extension built in C it's extremely fast and efficient. It's actually one of the fastest PHP frameworks, and according to some benchmarks it's the fastest framework out there. See More

Phalcon

Top Pro

Extremely fast

Top Con

Not for shared hosting

Phalcon needs root access to install the PHP extension which is written in C. Developers who plan on using Phalcon must use VPS or Cloud Hosting with root access available. See More

AmiableAshnan's Experience

Fast, simple and clean code See More

Specs

Phalcon is open source and is available under the BSD License. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

Require good programming skills

Not so easy to use if you want to gain the best from it. See More

Top Pro

Uses Volt template engine

The Volt template engine, which is embedded into Phalcon itself takes it's inspiration from the Jinja template engine and as such it's nice to look at, with a clear and understandable syntax. Volt also compiles very fast, like Phalcon itself, so it avoids being a bottleneck for the framework's overall speed. See More

Top Con

Debugging requires knowledge of C

You need to be a C programmer to debug Zephir or C code. Or if Phalcon is not maintained anymore and you have a problem and don't have much skills in C, you will be hard-pressed to find a C programmer to fix it. See More

Top Pro

Very flexible project structure

You can set up the base project as you want. It's very flexible See More

Top Pro

Clean and light project code

Since the framework code is not in the project directory, the code is light and clean. See More

Top Pro

Customizable with Zephir

Zephir is a high-level language designed to create PHP extensions easily by PHP programmers with no knowledge in C. Zephir does this by compiling directly to C and then the C program is in turn compiled to be run as a PHP extension. This, coupled with the fact that Zephir's syntax is very similar to PHP makes it a perfect way for PHP developers to use it for customizing Phalcon. See More

Top Pro

Loosely coupled components

Some components can be used as standalone packages like models, views, etc.. See More

Symfony is open source and released under the MIT license. See More

Symfony

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Con

Settings

Too many configurations. See More

Specs

PHP version:8.0.12

Default Template Engine:Twig

Default ORM:Doctrine

Symfony comes with a built-in toolbar that helps developers debug their applications during the development phase. The toolbar is also extendable and new components, called panels can be added if needed to help with the debugging process. See More

See All Specs

Top Pro

Easy debugging with a built-in debug toolbar

Top Con

Very hard to install

Setting it up on webhost without a console is difficult. See More

Top Pro

Great plugin ecosystem

One of the greatest strengths of Symfony is it's amazing and large plugin ecosystem, which comes as a result of it's large and dedicated community. Having a large number of plugins means less development time and more productivity. See More

Top Con

Promotes bad development practices

Such as annotations via comments. See More

Top Pro

Highly active community

Symfony has one of the most active communities out of all the PHP frameworks. This is shown by the high number of commits made every day in the GitHub repo. See More

Top Con

Doctrine ORM

Symfony Standard Edition, which is the most widely used distribution, comes integrated with Doctrine, the most resource hogging ORM library. See More

Top Pro

Teaches you good practices

Symfony makes you be a better programmer. You have to deal with the latest object-oriented design patterns such as service-oriented architecture, dependency injection, interface abstraction, and so on. See More

Top Con

You need a lot of files to display a single page

For a simple hello world page you need about 5 files. See More

Top Pro

Uses YAML/XML/PHP/Annotation

Symfony makes use of XML, YAML or PHP annotations to create configurations in order to tell Doctrine on how properties of a certain class should be. See More

Top Pro

Powerful event system

Symfony has a powerful built-in event system that allows you to add flexibility to applications and makes it easier to maintain the codebase down the road. See More

Top Pro

Great templating engine

Uses Twig, which is a simple and easy to learn templating language that can also be used as a standalone engine, outside the framework. See More

Top Pro

Uses Doctrine ORM

Symfony makes use of the Doctrine ORM to add an abstraction layer over the database in order to maintain flexibility without having unnecessary code duplication. See More

Fast, flexible and strong See More

Yii2

Top Pro

Very extensible and fast

GenerousAhuraMazda's Experience

Specs

PHP version:5.6.0+

Default ORM:ActiveRecords

Its easy and powerfull See More

Price:Free

Top Pro

Highly extensible

CleverAmun's Experience

Top Pro

It's fast, scalable and secured

Lots of tools to create your website fast and secure. See More

Top Pro

Clean and simple

Top Pro

Not bloated

Top Pro

Uses no obfuscating hocus pocus practices

Top Pro

If you understand PHP7, you know Yii2

Top Pro

Unparalleled prototyping support

Gii creates a fully functional prototype from a database design in mins. As soon as your database design is ready, you can generate the CRUD by simply specifying the options in gii. See More

Setting up CodeIgniter is quick and easy. You can download the version you want from the CI homepage or directly pull the latest version from GitHub. After that, you unzip the contents to the directory that's required. The final step is to edit the config.php to suit your needs and it's set up and ready for development. There are also a lot of guides and tutorials from developers who have been using CI for a long time. This is because of the relative old age of the framework and the large community behind it. See More

CodeIgniter

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

Top Con

Outdated

CodeIgniter was first released during the times of PHP 4. This means that a lot of features that were added later to PHP are not available. Some of these features are: Support for namespaces Modular separation by default Procedural function helpers While nowadays CodeIgniter can be used along the latest version of PHP, these features were not added so as not to mess with backward compatibility. They can still be used with CI, but it requires extending core files to make it work which is a waste of time and energy and requires advanced knowloedge of both PHP and CI. See More

PracticalIsimud's Experience

Easy and light, with the 4 version will take all the advances of PHP 7 See More

Specs

PHP version:5.4.8+

Default Template Engine:Custom CodeIgniter engine

Default ORM:DataMapper ORM

Top Pro

Lightweight

CodeIgniter has a small footprint, just 3MB and that's including the user guide. See More

Top Con

No unit testing

Top Pro

Well documented

The documentation is clear, structured and thorough. It explains both commonly used and CodeIgniter specific concepts and always with clear examples. See More

Top Con

It does not have basic functions

Some of the missing features include controller security, filters in forms and modoles, rules of validation, among others. See More

Top Pro

Active community

Because it's relatively old and well-liked, it has an active community of developers behind it. It's used by a lot of websites in production. See More

Top Pro

Open source

The MIT License (MIT) CodeIgniter is open source and is distributed under the MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Stable

CodeIgniter is tested by hundreds of thousand of developers that use it in production. This means that it's very hard for any bugs or problems to go unnoticed. Even when a new version is out, bugs are quickly found and patched up. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use templating engine

CodeIgniter has it's own templating engine built-in. It's based on a mustache-like templating language which is easy to learn for new developers who have never seen it. While experienced developers will feel very comfortable using it. See More

Top Pro

Output caching

CodeIgniter lets you cache the web pages in order to decrease loading times and increase efficiency and performance. See More

Top Pro

CodeIgniter v4 is a complete rewrite

CI4 will be out soon & is a rewrite.. "CodeIgniter 4 is a rewrite of the framework and is not backwards compatible." So it will support ALOT more newer functionality built-in. See More

Yii takes care of repetitive tasks through Gii, a web-based scaffolding tool. Gii takes care of code generation and creating code templates for: Models Controllers Forms Modules Extensions CRUD controller actions and views There are a lot of scaffolding templates made by community for Gii, that improve generated code functionality by a lot. Gii is very easy to extend yourself. See More

Yii

Top Pro

Rapid development through code scaffolding

Top Con

Can be hard for beginners

Since Yii requires developers to write code following certain rules, or in other words, it requires developers to follow the "Yii way of doing things" it can be hard for beginners to warm up to it and start using it right away. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.4+

Default Template Engine:Twig

Default ORM:Yii Active Record

Top Pro

Comes with important security standarts

Since security is a crucial part of any application, Yii comes with great security features out of the box to help developers create a secure and reliable application. These security features contain but are not restricted to: Input validation Output filtering Features against SQL injection Cross-site scripting prevention See More

Top Con

Not very good at many to many relations

(but there is a good plugin, namely CAdvancedArBehavior extension to do this) See More

Top Pro

Highly extensible

Yii is built to be extremely extensible. Virtually every component of the framework can be extended programmatically. For example, if you want to add a unique id to your views, it's very easy to do: namespace app\components; class View extends yii\web\View { public $bodyId; /* Yii allows you to add magic getter methods by prefacing method names with "get" */ public function getBodyIdAttribute() { return ($this->bodyId != '') ? 'id="' . $this->bodyId . '"' : ''; } } See More

Top Pro

Integrated with a testing framework

Yii makes use of Codeception, a great PHP testing framework that helps developers run their tests. They can be unit, functional or acceptance tests since Codeception supports them all. See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins available

Yii has about 2000 addons hosted on Yii's official website. These addons significantly decrease development time and increase the developer's efficiency. See More

Top Pro

License

Yii is free and open source and is distributed under the BSD License. See More

Top Pro

Strong community support

Yii has a strong and rather large community behind it. This is proven by the great number of blog posts, tutorials, guides and reviews on the Yii framework as well as the great number of extensions developed for it. See More

Top Pro

Easy to install

Yii uses Composer to handle it's dependency installation. This is rather easy and not very time consuming, although it should be noted that Composer is very resource-intensive considering what it's job is. But that is not really Yii's fault. See More

Top Pro

Best framework for CRUD operation

Yii Framework Provides most of features require for crud functionalities like GridView, Listview and DetailView (with jquery search and validation functions) by generating using GII. See More

Top Pro

Highly extensible without effort

Default ORM:Kumbia ActiveRecord, but can use any ORM

KumbiaPHP

Top Pro

Easy to use

Henry's Experience

+ See More

Specs

PHP version:5.4+

Check the independent benchmark. See More

License:New BSD

See All Specs

Top Pro

Very fast

LivelyIxpiyacoc's Experience

Easy to use. I love it! See More

Top Pro

Cache administration

Top Pro

It's MVC

Top Pro

Simple template system

Top Pro

Scaffolding support

Top Pro

Convention over configuration

Top Pro

Supports AJAX

Top Pro

Easy API Rest

Top Pro

Zero config

Cake has a built-in ORM which is pretty easy to use and learn. Building queries can also be done very easily and fetching entire columns can be done in one or two lines of code. See More

CakePHP

Top Pro

Built-in ORM that's easy to use

Top Con

Slow

Because of legacy code, old concepts and prioritizing development speed over everything else, CakePHP is bloated and slow. See More

IngeniousHoenir's Experience

Top PHP framework with most of modern functionality. It comes with db schema migrations, ORM, bake tool to quickly generate basic code, etc. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.4.16+

Default Template Engine:CakePHP Template

Developing in CakePHP is very fast and flexible. CakePHP is about fast and reliable development, it achieves this by following the convention over configuration principle as it's heavily inspired by Rails (which follows the same programming paradigm). Convention over configuration is all about making it easier for the developer to start immediately writing code without worrying on what's going on "under the hood". See More

Top Pro

Fast development

ProudNgariman's Experience

I've been using Cake since version 2.12 and it's a delight. Event more with version 3.x with its new ORM. The documentation is clear and exemple driven. See More

Top Pro

Large library of helper classes

CakePHP has a large library of helper classes with features such as: Authorization AJAX Forms E-mails Internationalization etc... See More

Top Pro

Exhaustive list of resources to learn CakePHP

Cake's great community has thrown together an exhaustive and amazing list of resources to get started with CakePHP. It's open source and can be found on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Open Source

CakePHP open source and is licensed under the MIT license. See More

Lithium has unified the relational and non-relational database APIs into a single one. Being one of the few frameworks to do it. See More

Li3

Top Pro

Unified relational and non-relational database API

Top Con

Less than ideal documentation

Documentation is scattered so it takes a little while to learn and figure some things out. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.3+

Default Template Engine:Custom Li3 engine

Lithium makes use of PHP namespaces to create a powerful plugin architecture. Almost every component of the framework is replaceable. See More

Top Pro

Robust plugin architecture

Top Pro

Fast Bootstrap & Autoloader

This framework loads faster than most due to its class autoloader. It is flexible as well and handles older classes - but requires the developer to define transforms here for naming convention, includes, etc. Many other frameworks use Composer for autoloading and that significantly slows down their bootstrap time because Composer's autoloader is extremely compatible without much developer interaction (it does not require as much involvement for autoloading legacy libraries). So it's a trade-off, speed vs. a little bit of up-front work. See More

Top Pro

Integrated unit testing

Lithium comes with integrated unit testing. It also has a test dashboard. See More

Top Pro

Aspect inspired filter system

Lithium's filter system is based on the paradigm of Aspect-oriented programming which aims to increase modularity by separating cross-cutting concerns and helping speed up development. See More

Top Pro

Great for building an API

Lithium can return JSON and many other formats from the same actions that render templates increasing productivity in many cases. It handles a "type" key in the route which allows it to render various responses with different Content-Types. This is incredibly useful and easy to extend. This combined with closures in routes makes Lithium a very good framework for building a RESTful API. See More

The thing that makes Silex stand out from other PHP microframeworks is the fact that it's built using some of Symfony2's components. Making it quite powerful but still lightweight enough to be considered a true microframework. See More

Silex

Top Pro

Built on top of Symfony components

Top Con

Documentation is not very extensive

The documentation for this framework is average, it's helpful mostly. But it is not extensive enough to cover everything in detail unfortunately. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Silex is open source and is licensed under the MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Simple and elegant DI container

Based on Pimple, Silex has a simple Dependency Injection container that consists of just one file and one class. See More

Top Pro

Testable

Silex makes use of Symfony2's HttpKernel which is used to abstract requests and responses. This in turn, makes it very easy to test apps created with the framework. See More

Top Pro

Extensible

By using Pimple, the Silex application extends the Pimple class, which in turn is nothing more than an implementation of the ArrayAccess interface that has been a part of PHP since version 5.0. This makes it possible to use an instance of the Application class as if it were an array. Like so: $app = new Silex\Application(); $app['config'] = new Config($config_path); This gives developers a great deal of flexibility when injecting dependencies and when testing. See More

Fuel has very few restrictions on how to write code. Classes and controllers can be in any file structure, any folder can be the "modules" folder and native classes can be extended any way you want. See More

FuelPHP

Top Pro

Total flexibility

Top Con

Small community

FuelPHP has a pretty small community compared to other alternatives. This means that there are not many resources and guides for it out there, but on the other hand, it's easier to get help from the core team of developers that are working on Fuel. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.3+

Default Template Engine:None

FuelPHP is open source and is released under the MIT license. See More

Top Pro

License

Top Pro

Out of the box HMVC structure

FuelPHP follows the HMVC pattern which makes it possible to divide the code into smaller modules. See More

Top Pro

Secure

Fuel takes security very serious, and as a result, has implemented the following measures to ensure the safety of your web applications: Output encoding in views CSRF protection XSS filtering Input filtering SQL injection See More

Top Pro

Powerful yet lightweight ORM

FuelPHP is all about being lightweight and simple, this is also demonstrated by it's built-in ORM, it's simple yet powerful. It maps a model to each table in the database, assigns fields on the table depending on the model configuration. See More

Since Flight uses static methods, it does not require for the application class to be instantiated. See More

Flight

Top Pro

Uses static methods

Top Con

Cannot use ArrayAccess

The fact that it uses static methods means that it's impossible for Flight to make use of ArrayAccess, which in turns means that it cannot inject dependencies easily. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Flight is open source and is released under the MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Filters

A unique feature of Flight is something that the author calls filters. Filters are functions which can be executed before and after any other function and can change the parameters and the output of said function. This feature is used instead of hooks which in other frameworks are used to execute code into different parts of the application's life-cycle. See More

Well designed and flexible, allowing it to suit many needs, small projects and large projects meeting PSRs and SOLID principles. See More

Zend Framework

Top Pro

Very well designed

Top Con

Documentation is pretty bad

For a newbie, its really hard to understand how things work. See More

TrustworthyEtugenEke's Experience

It is not mandatory to use the whole framework, but each component independently. Also, it is a very robust framework, it respects PSR and SOLID principles. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.3+

Default Template Engine:Zend_View

Default ORM:No default, but an ORM can be installed.

Top Pro

Enterprise ready

Zend is the most used PHP framework by big businesses. Zend is widely used and tested by a large number of banks, as well as companies, such as Allied Beverage, BBC, Shaklee, CarinBridge, BNP Paribas and more. See More

Top Con

Loose documentation

Since Zend has a loosely-coupled architecture, it means that the documentation will be quite loose as well. Even though there's a lot of documentation for the framework, it's still hard to use it as a guideline to create a completed project. Although this can be less of a problem considering all the tutorials and guides out there. See More

Top Pro

Open source

The files in this archive are released under the Zend Framework license Zend is free and open source and is released under the Zend Framework license. See More

Top Pro

Wide database support

Zend supports almost all kinds of databases out there. From MySQL, IBM DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server to PostgreSQL. See More

Top Pro

License

New BSD License. See More

Top Pro

Well architected

Top Pro

Corporate backing

Partnered with Google, IBM, Adobe, Microsoft See More

Top Pro

Extended predefined classes

Zend has a large library of predefined classes with which developers can create maintainable and stable web applications. This is done if the developer works within the constraints and with the components of these different predefined classes, which makes the application more maintainable. See More

Kohana has always been criticized for the poor documentation it has. Some things are not explained with details and some other things are not explained at all. See More

Lumen

Kohana

Top Con

Poorly documented

Top Pro

Lightweight

With no PECL extensions or PEAR libraries to increase it's bloat, Kohana is extremely lightweight and massive libraries are avoided for more consistency and speed. See More

Specs

PHP version:5.3.3+

Default Template Engine:KOstache

Kohana follows the OOP software paradigm and it strictly enforces the DRY principle, which makes it easier for developers to write clean and maintainable code. See More

Top Con

Deprecated PHP Framework

Top Pro

OOP framework that is extremely DRY

Top Pro

Tools for quick development

Includes tools that help developers to make applications quickly and efficiently. Some of these tools include: Translation libraries Code profiling Form validation etc... See More

Top Pro

Open source

Kohana is open source and is released under the BSD license, this means that it can be modified even for commercial purposes. See More

Top Pro

Low RAM usage

It is as fast as any popular framework, but the RAM usage is really low in comparison. See More

Slim's documentation is well organized and detailed, every concept is thoroughly explained and it is very helpful for both advanced users and beginners. See More

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Slim

Top Pro

Well organized and thorough documentation

Top Con

Very little consistency among different versions

There have been quite some changes that break the compatibility between Slim 2 and Slim 3. Even if you learned how to work with the Slim 2, you will find that Slim 3 requires re-training. See More

JoyfulBelenus's Experience

I love Slim. I come from a Django background where most things are abstracted, you just call some function or class without knowing how they were built, but with Slim, I have come to understand the way some abstract functions and classes were built. See More

Specs

Slim is minimal and that is a good thing if you want to start from there. It can be easily extended and even supports popular packages that are used in Laravel (like Illuminate\Database (eloquent)) for example. See More

License:GPL 2

Top Pro

A good starting point

Top Con

Dependency injection is too weak

It is not really dependency injection, but just a configurable container. See More

DecisiveTutewehiwehi's Experience

Slim is Minimal which means more control See More

Top Pro

REST based

REST fans will love the REST based architecture. See More

Top Con

Needs strong bases to create dependencies

The dependency container schema of Slim is one of the biggest PROS and CONS of the framework. It is true that this schema brings so much flexibility to add anything, but another thing that is true is that you need to have strong bases of patterns, and an extensive knowledge of your libraries to convert it into a Slim dependency. See More

Luiz Barni's Experience

Slim is awesome, but Pimple (it's dependency injection container) is terrible. See More

Top Pro

Supports tie-ins for Rack-like middleware

Rack is an interface used in Ruby frameworks used to group and order modules, which most of the time are Ruby classes, and specify between them. Slim uses a simple concept for it's middleware. By wrapping HTTP requests and responses it unifies the middleware into a single method call. See More

Top Con

Too minimal

While it's true that Slim is a microframework, it's still too minimal. When used for throwaway projects or simple prototypes, it's perfect. But in the long run, it becomes less and less useful and you end up in implementing a full custom framework in trying to tackle all the missing features. See More

Awilum's Experience

Slim is the best framework for API's and lightweight projects. See More

Top Pro

Useful classes

Contains classes for managing requests, responses, cookies, logging, views, HTTP caching, and more. See More

MemorableKhnum's Experience

i used Slim for a long time, then i tried Laravel for a new project. Now i'm rewriting all on Slim, it's simple and it doesn''t have too much shit like laravel does. See More

Top Pro

Flexible

Slim doesn't demand that you stick to a fixed folder structure. As long as you load Slim the right way you can do anything from there the way you like it. See More

TirelessTishpak's Experience

My experience with Slim so far flawless. I was drifted from CakePHP to Laravel to Lumen and finally settled into Slim. See More

Top Pro

Extremely lightweight

Paired with swoole it's a micro service powerhouse. See More

JollyBebinn's Experience

It's very easiest to configure a project, because it has only the necessary resources to start a project, not ORM, not template engine or cache, this can be a CON for some people but, this situation brings the opportunity to configure your project with any dependency or library that you want. You can use Eloquent, Doctrine or Propel as ORM (and also Slim has documentation about how to configure the first two), or you simply can made a connection class from scratch. You can use twig or plain PHP as template engines, or even you can create a module with your favorite temple engine as Smarty. All of this is possible because Slim have a DEPENDENCY CONTAINER schema to manage the parts of the projects. See More

Top Pro

Open source

The Slim Framework is open source and is released under the MIT public license See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

You can add any dependency, package or class that you want to use as a contained dependency. See More

Top Pro

Supports Php 5.3 and PHP 7

Top Pro

Makes it easy to understand the way some abstract functions and classes are built

In Django most things are abstracted, you just call some function or class without knowing how they were built, but with Slim, you end up understanding the way some abstract functions and classes are built. See More

Top Pro

Hooks for executing code at different points in its life-cycle

Slim supports code hooks for executing functions at different points in time during the application's lifecycle. See More