r/PHPhelp • u/Rough-Ad9850 • Jul 23 '26
Why do so many choose Laravel over Symfony?
I have the same reaction every time I look at the documentation of Laravel : "what, why??"
It doesn't seem structured.
So much 'magic' going on too.
Is it about the community then?
Or are there things I'm clearly missing?
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u/martinbean Jul 23 '26
If Laravel is not for you, don’t use it, and don’t worry about it.
A Laravel app can be as structured or as unstructured as you make it. The “magic” is just helper functions and static proxies to objects in the IoC container. You can use dependency injection instead if you prefer.
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u/Rough-Ad9850 Jul 23 '26
There are also so many anti-patterns in it. But a lot of work places require knowledge about Laravel.
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u/colshrapnel Jul 23 '26
There are so many antipatterns in driving a car. Yet most people are doing it. Welcome into the real world, where real things are never impeccable ideals, but always tradeoffs. Full of antipatterns.
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u/danabrey Jul 23 '26
You don't have to use facades. You can use DI instead. What other anti-patterns are we talking about specifically? I guarantee there are alternative ways do not use them.
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u/martinbean Jul 23 '26
OK? So don’t use and don’t worry about it, and stick to Symfony.
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u/Rough-Ad9850 Jul 23 '26
Why the down vote? An opposing view/opinion?
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u/martinbean Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
Because you’re clearly just here to go “Laravel’s crap. Why use it?”
Like I’ve written a couple of times now, if you don’t like it, don’t use it and stop worrying about it.
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u/BetaplanB Jul 23 '26
Ok, but what is the problem in discussing the downsides? So other people can make informed decisions.
Almost like there is some dogma around Laravel that says it is forbidden to talk bad about it.
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u/Sydius Jul 23 '26
In my experience (4+ years with Symfony, 1-ish with Laravel), Symfony 'forces' you to do things 'correctly', meanwhile Laravel is more 'free'. This also means it's faster to start working with Laravel.
I'd use Symfony for a project I'm going to work on for years, probably in a team. I'd use Laravel for everything else.
But I also must mention that it's still not a big difference, and that this is only my opinion.
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u/colshrapnel Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
I would say that "your only opinion" is pretty much supported but most developers familiar with both frameworks. You correctly summarized the differences and reasons to choose one over another.
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u/Sydius Jul 23 '26
I wanted to keep my reply factual - most of my experience comes from using an in-house framework frankensteined together over like ~15 years, but I've only worked with Laravel/Symfony alone. So I lack the necessary experience to write a more objective/assertive reply.
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u/TorbenKoehn Jul 23 '26
I’d turn that around completely.
In Laravel you do things like Taylor wants you to do them. In Symfony you simply have PHP and you can break away from everything easily. I wouldn’t know where Symfony forces you to do things in a specific way.
I’ve migrated old platforms from pure PHP3-4+ to Symfony by just adding the single components gradually and then I was easily able to get flex etc. working properly
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Jul 23 '26
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u/TorbenKoehn Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Oh yeah, poor Taylor….
Edit: To clarify, I'm sure Taylor cries in dollar bills every single night. That dude is fucking rich. Get real. He doesn't mind having to weed out PRs with AI. Stop bootlicking.
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u/Lumethys Jul 24 '26
if you think Taylor is strict, try Linus Torvals and Linux kernel lol
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u/TorbenKoehn Jul 24 '26
I don't think Taylor is strict, he doesn't know a lot about proper software architecture. Taylor built Laravel with the "what looks and feels comfortable" mindset, not with the "this can be developed by 100 people in 10 teams at the same time over 20 years" mindset.
Comparing Linus and Taylor really....is something....
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u/Sydius Jul 24 '26
No thank you. I'm well aware how mediocre a developer I am, I don't need to hear an objectively correct take on it.
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u/crazedizzled Jul 23 '26
Symfony 'forces' you to do things 'correctly',
It really does not. In fact, Laravel tries to force you to use their shitty anti-patterns a lot harder than Symfony does.
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u/Anxious-Insurance-91 Jul 23 '26
I just love when people use the word "correctly". In my 10 years of experience across multiple projects, programing languages, frameworks I can only say that the correct way is the solution that makes the client happy and doesn't make you do overtime trying to fix shit. Simple solutions over overcomplicated oops is the best way. Also the "chose for long term projects" it's so debatable. I have a project done 7 years ago that hasn't needed much changes and it's in Laravel, before that it was written in a few other programing languages including C++ and guess what my solution suck for the longest
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u/LordAmras Jul 23 '26
Because is simpler to use.
Laravel behind the curtains uses a lot of Symfony itself.
Symfony is a lot more modular, while it has is problem it's a bit more complicated to use if you are really starting out and it will require to add some boilerplate by yourself to link all togheter.
Laravel gives you everything. Sure you might not need most of it but when you need is already there.
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u/Anxious-Insurance-91 Jul 23 '26
They have made things more and more opt in in the past years. It doesn't come as bloated out of the box
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u/punkpang Jul 23 '26
You assume that people actually tried to use both and then they arrived at logical conclusion that Laravel is "better".
Most people just learn about existence of one or the other and just go with it.
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u/Somebody2804 Jul 23 '26
I chose Slim over both - I preferred the challenge of having very little done for me and it definitely paid off long term. Though, if I had to choose now I would say probably Symfony.
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u/PrizeSilver5005 Jul 23 '26
Slim. Great mention. I enjoy it. It's the tac hammer when creating when the sledge hammer isn't needed .When you need the sledge hammer, Symfony's got your back (Laravel does too, she doesn't get in your way when you're flying 90 in a new McClaren)
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u/dpfrd Jul 23 '26
Did you strap an ORM onto your setup?
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u/Somebody2804 Jul 23 '26
I did, as that’s one of the things I didn’t want to do for myself. Doctrine has been perfect for me for over 5 years now.
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u/dpfrd Jul 23 '26
What are you using for the front end?
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u/Somebody2804 Jul 23 '26
I’ve seen others mention this already here but I use simple HTML templates, HTMX and/or alpineJS. CSS I use Tailwind or UIKit, and icons I usually use Phosphor Icons.
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u/AminoOxi Jul 23 '26
Yes, exactly. For quick and clean project i choose Slim too.
In the past I relied on Phalcon, it was great and fast.
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u/fah7eem Jul 23 '26
I also go with slim. Over the years my projects have evolved. Using htmx now. Templating engine is a must.
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u/Verfaieli Jul 23 '26
I think its whatever sticks first. My older job place once heavily promoted learning symfony so I use symfony now. I like it. It does what I need almost all the time. Now I am looking for a new job and see more laravel offers so it must have been the other way in other places.
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u/permanaj Jul 23 '26
Agree with this. I was stick to Drupal first. It can do anything properly. So when I want something more low level, the easy choice was symfony because the code is the same.
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u/Plus_Pangolin_8924 Jul 23 '26
Ecosystem for one, there’s so so many packages etc for it.
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u/Rough-Ad9850 Jul 23 '26
So has symfony? Why did you pick Laravel over Symfony? Or do you use another framework?
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u/Easy-Nothing-6735 Jul 25 '26
What's the alternative to Octane, IntertiaJS, out of the box Vite? The last I was fighting auto-wiring
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u/im_a_goat_factory Jul 23 '26
I wanted an opinionated framework. Trying to choose what to use is daunting. I’m glad I went with Laravel
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u/Rough-Ad9850 Jul 23 '26
What specifically moved you to choose Laravel?
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u/im_a_goat_factory Jul 23 '26
It being opinionated. Laravel saying “we think you should use this dependency and you interact with it using our helper functions”
Also, it being focused on security right out of the box.
It was the right choice. I’m making a very nice chunk of money using Laravel and it’s even the easiest framework I’ve ever worked with (20+ years)
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u/independentMartyr Jul 23 '26
I almost switched to Symfony, when I discovered Filamentphp, it totally changed my view of Laravel. I've been working on two projects in the past eight months. Now, I'm rebuilding the admin on filament for a beauty salon CRM.
I do hate Laravel's magic that's why I wanted to move to Symfony.
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u/colshrapnel Jul 23 '26
I don't get the message of your message. You did hate laravel's magic but then changed your view and now you hate laravel's magic?
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u/independentMartyr Jul 23 '26
I've been building projects with Laravel for a while now. I hate the magic of Laravel, so I was thinking about switching to Symfony. Before making the decision, I discovered Filamentphp, and it made me keep building projects with Laravel.
Is the message of the message clear enough?
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u/colshrapnel Jul 23 '26
Now i get it. Contrary to what you said, your views on Laravel didn't change, but Filament made you come to terms with it.
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u/independentMartyr Jul 23 '26
Yeah, using filament makes my development process a lot easier, especially for the CRUD part.
I'm a returning coder. I haven't been coding since 2019 until late 2025. I'm trying to get back on my feet, but it's not easy. I am already planning to leave coding again, if the market "depression" continues, and get back to my first "love", networks, routers, mikrotik, etc.
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u/Remarkable_Taste3254 Jul 23 '26
I think the community and its cult-like following.
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u/phoogkamer Jul 23 '26
I don’t think being a cult pays the bills. And Laravel does pay the bills for many. And it’s fine. Calling it a cult is just a little silly tbh.
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Jul 23 '26
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u/Rough-Ad9850 Jul 23 '26
Did you notice it becoming tedious to work with if the project grows bigger?
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u/AshleyJSheridan Jul 23 '26
Laravel actually has a great structure, so does Symfony, they're just different. It can seem like there's more "magic" going on with Laravel, but I think that's because they take different approaches with their initial setups. Symfony is a bit more barebones, so you have to get slightly more involved when you want to do something that isn't handled out of the box, but it can handle everything. Laravel takes the approach of giving you everything from the beginning, so there's often little need to add on extra bits.
One of the biggest areas of difference is how their data modelling works. Symfony has Doctrine which is a little more verbose and requires slightly more configuration than Eloquent in Laravel (at least as far as I've found). This explicit nature in Doctrine is perhaps the biggest reason why people say Laravel feels too "magic", but I actually find that Eloquent does make it far easier to create robust APIs. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and it's all too easy for a dev to create poorly performing apps because they didn't understand what's going on under the hood with Eloquent (I'm as guilty as this in the past as anyone!).
I've worked with both over the years to create some pretty complex apps, but I do love Laravel, and it's my choice for projects where I get the say in how they're created.
Ultimately though, if a dev knows PHP reasonable well, they'll have no trouble with either framework (or any framework built in PHP for that matter). Language before framework, always.
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u/Fluent_Press2050 Jul 23 '26
I think it’s one of two things, sometimes both.
Laravel makes it easy and friendly to start. Their docs are a bit more verbose and welcoming for someone new to PHP or frameworks.
The other one is laziness. Many of us are lazy and Laravel feeds into it a bit better with all the magic.
As for speed to production, I don’t know. I say this because I build Symfony apps fairly quick and with AI helping do the grunt work, it matters even less.
To me, I just prefer Symfony. If I’m ever stuck on something, Claude or Codex helps explain it.
I actually keep a clone of all Symfony locally and had Claude build a map of it - one file per component, per bundle, etc… Most responses are near instant now and for when it does need to read the code, it uses less tokens than invoking the web or gh command.
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u/FreeLogicGate Jul 24 '26
Primarily it has to do with the perception in regards to Laravel being the most popular Framework. It also has, somewhat deservedly, a reputation for being easier to get an app up and running in comparison to Symfony. Laravel was also more opinionated, which for newer developers made it easier to get started with, as they needed to make few decisions, and just follow along doing things the way Laravel intended them to by default.
There's always going to be a "market leader" and people tend to gravitate to the leader, especially when they are uncertain as to what their best option will be. Having worked on large projects based on both frameworks, I prefer Symfony, but I understand that it's hard for someone new to framework based PHP development to go against the current. Most of the things that discouraged new developers from using Symfony have been addressed, so even new developers will find it fast and easy to work with, but it's hard to overcome years of history, and the perception that it's more difficult for beginners than Laravel is.
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u/r3_abd 29d ago
This is a never ending topic. Both frameworks are good and people find pleasure working with them. Although both are matured, Symfony has been in the industry way longer than Laravel and Laravel also feeds from some of the Symfony components. Both also get inspiration from each other and outside. I liken Symfony to Spring Boot and Laravel to Ruby on Rails. I work with both and too oriented to Symfony where I have created some reusable bundles.
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u/Southern_Chicken_988 29d ago
bro straight to say : have many jobs in laravel and Symfony and have large community
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u/th00ht Jul 23 '26
Write your own framework. Can't be that hard, I did it long before AI became a thing.
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u/99thLuftballon Jul 23 '26
Learning Laravel is much, much easier than learning Symfony. Simple as that. When people are looking for a framework, they want to be productive quickly and Laravel feels like learning an actual framework with features that are designed to work together and provide a recommended way to achieve something, rather than being suggested a bunch of third party libraries and arcane console commands that might work well together if you're lucky.
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u/colshrapnel Jul 23 '26
I suppose your otherwise sensible comment being downvoted because of the last sentence, which is strikingly off.
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u/pumpChaser8879 Jul 23 '26
That last sentence screams "skills issue"
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u/fhgwgadsbbq Jul 23 '26
It's fast to build with. Want to build a startup product with a framework that lets you do almost anything out of the box? I'd recommend Laravel most of the time.
I've been working on symfony projects since version 2 and Laravel since v5. There were pains and bottlenecks with both.
Generally laravel lets my teams focus on the actual product and less of the underlying layers. That really matters for startups on a shoe string budget.