Our verdict on a heated debate on PHP frameworks Laravel Vs Symfony. Compared for performance, popularity, modularity, scalability, database, & flexibility.

1. Laravel Vs
Symfony:
Which PHP
Framework To
Choose in
2021?
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2. Quick Summary: A comprehensive decision-
maker blog when confused about choosing the
best PHP framework for your web application
development. PHP Laravel Vs Symfony is the
most debated topic in the world of web
development, and CTOs like yourself want to
know the ideal framework for your business
website.
Pore over this discussion to learn about the
critical aspects that make these two popular
PHP frameworks stand out in modularity,
popularity, performance, database, and learning
curve.

3. Table of Index
1. Preface
2. Laravel overview
3. Symfony overview
4. Laravel vs Symfony Pros and Cons
5. Laravel vs Symfony Popularity
6. Laravel vs Symfony Performance
7. Laravel vs Symfony Templating Engine
8. Laravel vs Symfony Modularity & Scalability
9. Laravel vs Symfony Database Support
10. Laravel vs Symfony Learning Curve
11. Synopsis

4. Preface

5. The ongoing battle between the two leading
PHP frameworks- Symfony and Laravel will
come to a closure after you read this blog. This
blog has covered the merits and demerits of
Laravel vs Symfony 4, along with the difference
between Laravel and Symfony, we have covered
the detailed categorized comparison on their
modularity, scalability, popularity,
performance, community, database support,
and learning curve.
PHP frameworks are the most popular,
preferable, and reliable choices for
entrepreneurs to develop their cross-platform
web applications. Developers love PHP
frameworks’ coding style and believe that they
are available handy and follow best practices
and methods. The delay occurs because of the
difficulty in finding the best-suitable PHP
framework.

6. Laravel Overview

7. Before we indulge in comparing Laravel vs
Symfony 2021, let us answer What is the Laravel
framework?Laravel is the top most famous and
useful PHP framework having an expressive
and elegant syntax. Taylor Otwell created
Laravel in 2011 and availed everyone of us
freely(open-source) under MIT license. Laravel
uses the MVC architecture pattern for web
application development.
Official Website: https://laravel.com/
GitHub stars: 63.9k
Coming to the most searched query, Is laravel
frontend or backend? Laravel is a server-side
framework, and hence it is useful in backend
development. You can create exceptional
templating, HTML authentication, routing
handling, custom backend logic, predefined
architectures, and much more.

8. Of all the frameworks that exist today,
Laravel stands at a market share of 0.35%.
Approximately 86,032 live websites are
currently using the PHP Laravel framework.
In the USA, 307,911 websites are using
Laravel.
Market Usage Statistics of Laravel

9. On-demand streaming web applications
SaaS-based applications
Multilingual CMS systems
Self-hosted website performance
monitoring app
Use Cases of Laravel framework

10. Symfony Overview

11. Relatively, the market share of the Symfony
framework is quite low at 0.05%.
At present, 10,974 websites are using
Symfony.
In the USA market, 18,998 websites are using
the Symfony components or the framework.
Now, it is the turn of answering What is
Symfony?
Symfony is so many things altogether. It is not
just a framework; it is a set of reusable PHP
components, a philosophy, and a community.
Fabien Potencier launched Symfony in 2011
under the MIT license to build robust enterprise
applications.
Official Website: https://symfony.com/
GitHub stars: 24.7k
Market Usage Statistics of Symfony

12. Microservices
Content Management Systems
Accounting
Reporting
E-Commerce platform
Blogs
Bots
Use Cases of Symfony framework

13. Laravel vs
Symfony
Pros and Cons

14. Pre-built tools
Templating engine-Blade
Routing
Automation with Artisan CLI
Automated testing.
Backend congestion because Laravel is
lightweight
Unreliable third-party libraries
The vast community size is a drawback here
because it gets challenging to find a reliable
library.
Let us check out the pros and cons of both these
fantastic PHP frameworks: Symfony Laravel
comparison. Let us begin with checking the pros
and cons of Laravel.
Pros of Laravel Framework
Cons of Laravel

15. Biggest Community
Up-to-date
Popular platforms using Symfony, like
Drupal, Magento, eZ Publish, recommend
Symfony.
It has a steep learning curve making it
difficult to learn in the beginning as
compared to other frameworks.
Some applications using Symfony perform
slowly because it is dependant on other
technologies.
Development time is slow because reusable
development is for multiple uses.
Pros of Symfony
Cons of Symfony

16. Laravel vs
Symfony
Popularity

17. You are wondering how the popularity of a
framework is going to affect your web
application development? Sure it does; think it
differently. When a particular technology or
framework is popular, you will quickly get
developers for your web application
development using that technology.
Hence, before choosing the PHP framework,
find out how popular that framework is so that
you can always have back-hand support.

18. Laravel Popularity
Beyond any doubts, Laravel is the most popular
of all PHP frameworks. From the above Google
Trends graph as well, the PHP Laravel
framework stands on the top. Laravel
developers can find immense support from the
latest Laravel documentation, Laracast
discussion forum, Codebright, Treehouse, and
Sitepoint.
Symfony Popularity
Just after the most popular Laravel framework
stands the Symfony framework in the graph.
The Symfony developers get enough support
from the official documentation page.
The Symfony community consists of 600,000
developers from over 120 countries of the
world.

19. Laravel vs
Symfony
Performance

20. The above graph shows survey results where
different domains use which framework out of
PHP Symfony vs Laravel benchmark to
compare your distribution. We executed a test
of both the competing PHP frameworks Laravel
vs Symfony performance by checking their load
time with web servers Apache and Nginx.

21. Laravel Performance Monitoring
The Laravel performance benchmark is easily
extensible. Laravel supports high-speed
development with fewer coding efforts and
delivers faster results. Laravel uses Symfony
components and is flexible.

22. Symfony Performance Monitoring
Symfony is comparatively slower for complex
web projects. The framework supports
adaptability and optimal performance. It is
easily extensible, and there are several
scalability options available for PHP Symfony.

23. Laravel vs
Symfony
Templating
Engine

24. Laravel Template Engine
Laravel uses the Blade template engine. The
blade has a lot more to offer compared to the
default PHP templating engine. Additionally,
Laravel uses the Lumen sub-framework to build
microservices and APIs.
Symfony Template Engine
Symfony uses the Twig template engine. Twig is
fast, secure, and flexible. Beyond the basic
features like inheritance, sections, output
escaping, and clean syntax, Twig goes to the
extent of adding an extra security layer for your
application.

25. Now, have a look at the difference Twig vs
Blade template engine.
Both the templating engines add
functionality in different manners.
They have a different syntax for handling
control structures.
Both templating engines handle variables
and variable access differently.
Vary in security perspectives.
Blade vs Twig
The templating engines of Laravel and Symfony
are Blade and Twig, respectively. Some common
similarities are compiling plain PHP, providing
syntax to output variables, escaping
mechanism, template-inheritance, and sections.

26. Here, we share examples of a sample code in
both the templating engines for you to see the
differences.
Laravel Blade Template Engine
Src:
https://medium.com/@barryvdh/comparing-
blade-and-twig-templates-in-laravel-
187fde7fcac9

27. Symfony Twig Template Engine
Src:
https://medium.com/@barryvdh/comparing-
blade-and-twig-templates-in-laravel-
187fde7fcac9

28. Laravel vs
Symfony
Modularity &
Scalability

29. Laravel Module Structure
Laravel uses the MVC architecture, and hence
there a large number of dependencies. These
dependencies make Laravel a little less flexible.
However, for MVC applications, there is an
added benefit with Laravel modular structure.
Symfony Module Structure
Symfony makes use of reusable components,
and hence it is more robust and modular.
Developers can organize their application code
better with the Symfony framework. The
framework uses a bundled form of modular
structure and can share features and code
amongst different apps.

30. Laravel vs
Symfony
Database
Support

31. Laravel Database Support
Laravel uses Eloquent for object-relational
mapping ORM to access data. Database
migrations are manual. Laravel enables
exclusive support for the following databases:
SQLite, SQLServer, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
Symfony Database Support
Doctrine handles the ORM in Symfony.
Database migrations are automatic. Symfony
has available database support for Drizzle,
PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQLServer, Oracle,
SAP Sybase, and SQL Anywhere.

32. Laravel vs
Symfony
Learning Curve

33. Laravel learning curve
The learning curve of Laravel is quite lenient.
Developers can learn everything about this
framework from its documentation, video
support, and tutorials.
Symfony learning curve
Compared to Laravel, Symfony is a bit difficult
to learn. Though the documentation is really
helpful, you do not get enough community
support and tutorials as Laravel.

34. Synopsis

35. Finally, to give an overview of the detailed
comparison we did for this blog, we rated each
category’s scores.
Popularity
Laravel: 1
Symfony: 0
Performance
Laravel: 1
Symfony: 0
Templating Engine
Laravel: 2
Symfony: 1
Modularity & Scalability
Laravel: 1
Symfony: 1

36. Database Support
Laravel: 1
Symfony: 2
Learning Curve
Laravel: 1
Symfony: 0
The overall winner is Laravel when comparing
all the aspects considered when selecting the
right framework for your web application
development. However, your choice ultimately
depends on your project requirements. Bacancy
Technology is the right destination where you
can hire laravel developer who will transcend
your business goals into achievements. Are you
ready to outset your project development?
Share your feedback after viewing the
comprehensive comparison Laravel Vs Symfony
Infographic.

37. Thank You
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