Yii 41,671 (github.com/yiisoft/yii2 (https://github.com/yiisoft/yii2 14,290 ), BSD-3-Clause) built its name on speed and on Gii, a browser-based generator that scaffolds models, CRUD controllers and forms from tables. It is now two products on separate calendars:
Yii 2, in most existing codebases, is at 2.0.55 (9 May 2026). Yii's release-cycle page shows the line feature-frozen since May 2024, security-only from 23 November 2026 and at end of life on 23 November 2027, supporting PHP up to 8.4. Its basic template still installed and ran php yii help on PHP 8.5.4 here. Gii is stable for it (yiisoft/yii2-gii 2.2.7).
Yii3, released on 31 December 2025, is a set of independent packages (yiisoft/di, yiisoft/router, yiisoft/yii-runner-http and more) started from the yiisoft/app template, 1.4.0 (PHP 8.2 to 8.5). Its Gii port has no stable release yet.
Treat a Yii 2 application as a migration project for the coming year, not after support ends.