A Side-by-Side Comparison

PHP frameworks in September 2026 (repositories are on github.com; Yii3 is the yiisoft/app template)
Framework	Version	Min PHP	Architecture	Best suited to	Repository, licence
Laravel 2,157	13.33.0	8.3	Full-stack MVC	Full web apps	laravel/framework, MIT
Symfony 6,093	8.1.7, LTS 7.4	8.4, LTS 8.2	Components, full stack	Long-lived systems	symfony/symfony, MIT
CodeIgniter 23,248	4.7.4	8.2	Light MVC	Shared hosting	codeigniter4/CodeIgniter4, MIT
CakePHP 43,091	5.4.2	8.2	Convention MVC	Schema-driven apps	cakephp/cakephp, MIT
Yii 2 41,671 / Yii3	2.0.55 / 1.4.0	7.4 / 8.2	MVC / packages	Existing Yii apps	yiisoft/yii2, yiisoft/app, BSD-3-Clause
Laminas / Mezzio	3.8.0 / 3.28.1	8.1 / 8.2	MVC / middleware	Standards-first APIs	laminas, mezzio/mezzio, BSD-3-Clause
Slim 32,516	4.15.3	7.4	Micro, PSR-15	Small APIs	slimphp/Slim, MIT
Lumen 2,157	11.2.0	8.2	Micro (retired)	No new projects	laravel/lumen-framework, MIT
Phalcon 730,690	5.22.0	8.1	C extension	Servers you control	phalcon/cphalcon, BSD-3-Clause

For a fair check, the bookshop route also went into a copy of the Laravel skeleton, as a plain-text Route::get('/hello', ...) in routes/web.php. This loop serves each app in turn:

Serving each app in turn and requesting /helloPHP

for app in symfony slim codeigniter laravel phalcon; do
  opts=(); [ $app = phalcon ] && opts=(-d extension=$PWD/phalcon/phalcon.so)
  php "${opts[@]}" -S 127.0.0.1:8322 -t $app/public > /dev/null 2>&1 &
  pid=$!; sleep 1
  curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8322/hello
  kill $pid; wait $pid
done

Output

Hello, bookshop, from Symfony 8.1.7
Hello, bookshop, from Slim 4.15.1
Hello, bookshop, from CodeIgniter 4.7.4
Hello, bookshop, from Laravel 13.33.0
Hello, bookshop, from Phalcon 5.22.0

Counting installed packages and vendor sizePHP

for app in laravel symfony slim codeigniter; do
  printf '%-12s %4s packages  %s\n' $app "$(composer -d $app show | wc -l)" \
    "$(du -sh $app/vendor | cut -f1)"
done

Output

laravel       109 packages  69M
symfony        32 packages  11M
slim           11 packages  1.3M
codeigniter    33 packages  28M

Those are the installers' defaults, test tools included; composer install --no-dev -o cut Laravel to 76 packages and 43M and CodeIgniter to 3 and 5.7M. For timing, each app ran in production mode after its own cache step (php artisan optimize, Symfony's cache:clear for prod, php spark optimize). A script, timing.sh, started a fresh php -S with OPcache five times per app, timed the first request (cold) and the next 20 (warm) with curl 3,008 , and printed medians:

Timing /hello on each frameworkPHP

bash timing.sh

Output

laravel      cold  204.0 ms   warm    5.7 ms
symfony      cold   83.7 ms   warm    3.0 ms
slim         cold   19.3 ms   warm    0.8 ms
codeigniter  cold   51.3 ms   warm    1.5 ms
phalcon      cold    1.4 ms   warm    0.7 ms

These are proportions from one WSL2 6 machine, PHP's development server and a route that does nothing; a second run landed within 2 ms of every figure. Laravel also pays for a session its web group starts in SQLite 4,756 . Cold requests differ most because they are spent compiling framework code, which Phalcon skips; once OPcache holds it, every framework answers in a few milliseconds, less than a single real page's database work (MySQL).

MENU

A Side-by-Side Comparison