Slim and Lumen

Slim and Lumen

Slim 32,516 (github.com/slimphp/Slim (https://github.com/slimphp/Slim 12,275 ), MIT) is a micro-framework: a router, a PSR-15 middleware pipeline and error handling, nothing more. You add a PSR-7 implementation (slim/psr7), a container if you want one, and your own database layer. Slim 4.15.3 (1 September 2026) supports PHP 7.4 to 8.5, and the whole bookshop app is one file:

The complete Slim 4 application in public/index.phpPHP

<?php
use Psr\Http\Message\ResponseInterface as Response;
use Psr\Http\Message\ServerRequestInterface as Request;
use Slim\App;
use Slim\Factory\AppFactory;
require __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = AppFactory::create();
$app->get('/hello', function (Request $request, Response $response): Response {
    $response->getBody()->write('Hello, bookshop, from Slim ' . App::VERSION . "\n");
    return $response->withHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
});
$app->run();

With 11 packages in 1.3 MB, Slim suits a small JSON API or webhook receiver that you want to understand completely. One quirk shows in A Side-by-Side Comparison: the 4.15.3 package still sets App::VERSION to '4.15.1', so trust composer show over a version constant.

Lumen 2,157 , Laravel 2,157 's own micro-framework, is finished. Its documentation says "we no longer support beginning new projects with Lumen. Instead, we recommend always beginning new projects with Laravel," citing PHP's speed gains and Octane 4,043 . The framework's last release was 11.2.0 (26 November 2024), and the laravel/lumen skeleton never moved past version 10: a fresh install here reported Laravel Framework Lumen (10.0.4) (Laravel Components ^10.0), components out of support since February 2025 (Versions and Support). Migrate Lumen services to Laravel, which shares their routing and controllers.

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