Which PHP Framework Dominates 2019? Data-Driven Comparison of Laravel, Symfony, and More

PHP Framework Overview

Before diving deeper, here is a brief history of the major PHP frameworks, including their initial release dates, official websites, GitHub repositories, current versions, and licenses.

Laravel – first released 2011‑09, current version 5.8, MIT license.

Symfony – first released 2010‑02, current version 4.2, MIT license.

Zend Framework – first released 2009‑04, current version 3, New BSD license.

CodeIgniter – first released 2006‑02, current version 3.1.10, MIT license.

CakePHP – first released 2005‑05, current version 3.7, MIT license.

Google Trends 2019

Google Trends data shows Laravel leading the list of PHP frameworks in 2019, with CodeIgniter also competing strongly, while Symfony and CakePHP hold notable positions.

Stack Overflow Trends 2019

According to Stack Overflow trends, Laravel has experienced massive growth since 2013 and remains far ahead of other frameworks, which have largely stagnated.

GitHub Stars Since First Commit (2019)

GitHub star counts (as of writing) rank Laravel at 52,166 stars, far ahead of Symfony (20,683) and CodeIgniter (17,251). Zend Framework, CakePHP and others have considerably fewer stars.

Comparison Based on Other Metrics

Twitter followers: Laravel 98.6K, Symfony 34.3K, Zend 47.8K, CodeIgniter 23K, CakePHP 17.4K.

Packagist downloads: Laravel 62.1M+, Symfony 41M+, Zend 4.9M+, CodeIgniter 0.47M+, CakePHP 4.0M+.

Minimum PHP version required: Laravel 5.6.4, Symfony 5.6.0, Zend 5.6, CodeIgniter 5.3.7, CakePHP 5.6.

REST API response time: Laravel 5.5 ms, Symfony 2.2 ms, Zend 3.9 ms, CodeIgniter unknown, CakePHP 5.8 ms.

These metrics provide a snapshot of the top PHP frameworks among web developers in 2019.

Disclaimer: All figures were accurate at the time of writing and may change over time.

References

PHP Benchmarks

Google Trends

Stack Overflow