Are you aware of the fact that PHP frameworks are preferred the most for web development because of obvious reasons such as optimal use of codes, easily customized, and scalability Among every other PHP framework, Laravel, and Symfony are the two most popular and comparable because of the ability to create complex web applications without occurring extra cost or time?
While the world is evolving around Custom PHP web development, Laravel, and Symfony have been the most popular frameworks for several years. The ability to run the process smoothly and to adapt to future changes easily are the main core areas for developers to improve the efficiency of their web solutions.
Developers prefer Laravel because of its fast development, high speed, performance, and security features. Whereas, with Symfony, the development of complex and large-size web applications is easy.
After doing the full analysis, it is safe to say that in this article, you will find an overview of Laravel and Symfony along with the features, advantages, and use cases. And this will help you choose the best suitable framework for your project.
What is Laravel?
Laravel is a classy PHP framework that was created as an alternative option to CodeIgniter. It is free and open-sources under an MIT license which makes it popular among developers to create web applications and websites.
Laravel has an expressive syntax that allows reusing existing components from different frameworks to build an effective web solution.
Laravel follows an MVC structure and is built using Symfony components, which makes it significantly easier and flexible enough to start developing and eventually managing web applications. Additionally, serval built-in features make the whole framework scalable enough to operate on different databases.
Top Features of Laravel
- MVC architecture
Laravel follows the MVC architecture pattern, which means that the application code is organized into three separate components: models, views, and controllers. This pattern makes it easier to maintain the code and allows for greater separation of concerns.
- Fast authentication
With Laravel, it is incredibly easy to install a full authentication system. It can accomplish different tasks in a single command from logging in, signing up, and resetting the password. It also provides a way to control access and organize authorization logic.
- In-built Command-line-interface
Laravel’s Artisan command-line interface provides a set of powerful tools for managing an application’s codebase. It allows developers to perform common tasks such as generating code and migrating the database.
- Original templating engine
Laravel’s Blade templating engine provides a simple elegant syntax for creating templates. It allows for the creation of reusable templates and makes it easy to create dynamic content on web pages.
- Eloquent ORM
Laravel’s Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) is a powerful feature that simplifies the interaction between the application and the database. It makes it easy to define database tables and relationships and provides many useful functions for querying the database.
Advantages of Laravel
- Handling traffic under server loads
To grow your business, it is important to build a strong website that doesn’t crash under server loads. Laravel has a unique queuing system that can prioritize certain tasks to run faster and postpone certain other tasks.
The framework helps in building a website that handles requests much faster and works smoothly. You can save the extra cost of hosting and implementing other speed optimization techniques.
- Automated task execution and scheduling
Every web application needs to automate tasks when necessary. Such as sending emails, implying new orders into your execution system, or cleaning up junk or cache memory to improve the website’s performance.
Before Laravel was introduced, developers had to generate a Cron entry to schedule each task. Laravel comes with a feature ‘Command Scheduler’ that allows developers to command a schedule and it automatically executes it.
Moreover, it occupies only a single Cron record and reduces the cost of hosting.
- Integration of third-party application
Your company’s marketing tool, custom payment gateways like PayPal or Google Pay, or a website chat, every company’s website requires third-party integration.
If your site demands third-party integration, Laravel offers basic APIs for integration which makes it a solid choice for the process of web development.
- Simplified URL redirection
Laravel’s ability to simplify URLs makes it easier to define and identify routes. URL routing promotes navigation to land users on the desired page in the application, it is a critical process while developing a web application. Laravel framework makes the entire process easy.
- Automated Testing
Laravel’s unit testing features examine the web software’s performance. It shows the overall performance of the application without any glitches or errors.
Developers can easily test and analyze results effectively without spending extra cost or effort. With this built-in security feature, you can save costs on implementing tests on your project.
What is Symfony?
Symfony is a PHP framework that provides reusable PHP components for web development. Symfony was created in 2005 under the MIT license.
Being an Open-source PHP framework, Symfony can implement any required module on its own and make the project customizable according to your requirements with cost-saving methods.
Symfony also uses the MVC structure but it’s altogether different from Laravel’s MVC structure. It is mostly used to eliminate the difficulties in coding to allow the user to design the software to their requirements and to save time throughout the process of web development.
The size and strength of the Symfony community enable users with an equal number of options. Thanks to the reusability of codes, Symfony can be used in developing complicated projects.
Top Features of Symfony
- Components
Symfony has a wide range of components to automate routine tasks and enhance the process of web development. Web developers can build their modules and also can use Symfony components in any other framework.
Bundles together with components give web developers more freedom to build modules without breaking the application’s architecture which eventually enhances the app development process.
- Unit testing
Symfony uses PHPUnit independent library that reduces developers’ routine work and automates unit testing features.
With reusable components, flexible bundles, and the ability to customize, it becomes easy to build and maintain the code and structure of the code and provide unit testing.
- Elaborated documentation
The simplicity to understand, well-structured, and adaption of every Symfony update makes documentation one of the top features of Symfony which is used by many developers.
- Debugging
What makes the process simpler is an extensible, effective debugging toolbar that Symfony provides. To make the application reliably stable and secure, it makes sure that each new code is tested.
- Effective profiler
Symfony provides a profiler designed to monitor the application’s behavior that makes maintenance smooth and hassle-free. With a comprehensive panel, it is easy to find all the information regarding numerous activities.
Advantages of Symfony
- Quick app development
With the ability to reuse components and module systems, the development of applications with Symfony are faster than other PHP frameworks. Also, the wide range of libraries available can help in finding all the modules for developing your projects.
- Interoperability
Despite being a PHP framework, Symfony allows developers the freedom to use other software. You can choose between translation management, forms management, and dependency injector that makes your web applications contemporary.
- Management of caching
Symfony can manage caching in the system through the MySQL database. If you want to execute previous statements, Symfony allows you to revisit them easily.
- Innovation
Symfony is known for being fast, reusable, and flexible which allows it to innovate in pioneering tools. Symfony has a tool that supports developers to become more creative and innovative.
- Re-use of components
MVC framework helps developer to build web applications faster. It also allows to use of already developed components customize according to the requirements. This saves a lot of time for developers as they don’t have to build a web app from scratch and can release it to the market sooner.
Comparison between Laravel and Symfony
- Similarity
Laravel and Symfony are different in features to advantages but there are a few similarities available.
- Open-source
Laravel and Symfony both are open-source frameworks used to build web development solutions.
- PHP frameworks
Laravel and Symfony both use PHP as their base.
- MVC architecture
Laravel and Symfony both follow MVC architectural patterns to bring structure to unstructured codes.
- CLI tool
A CLI (Command line interface) tool is available for common tasks.
- Statistics
| Laravel | Symfony | |
| Websites | 7,11,178 | 30,201 |
| Popularity | Laravel currently has 62,409 customers | With 2597 customers, Symfony is less popular |
| Market Share | 0.27% | 0. 07% |
| Industries | Laravel is used the most by Web development, Digital marketing, and the software development industry. | The top three industries using Symfony are Ecommerce, PHP, and Web development respectively. |
| Popular countries | The United States is the biggest consumer of the Laravel framework, followed by India and the United Kingdom. | Symfony is most used in France, followed by Germany and the United States. |
(Source: 6sense, BuiltWith)
- Brief comparison
| Laravel | Symfony | |
| Year of introduction | 2011 | 2005 |
| Latest version | Laravel 10.5 | Symfony 6.2.8 |
| Flexibility | Less than Symfony | More Flexible |
| Documentation | GitHub, Laracast, treehouse, SitePoint | By Symfony Community |
| Data migration | Manual | Automatic |
| Applications using | Invoice Ninja, Alison, Barchart, MyRank etc. | Spotify, BlaBlaCar, DailyMotion, Trivago etc. |
- Detailed comparison
Over the years, 79% of websites have been using the PHP framework. It is known that Laravel is more popular than Symfony.
As per Google Trends, Laravel has been on the top and Symfony is following up, but is not so close.
(Source: Google Trends)
- Performance
As it involves so many various components, performance evaluation is always a challenging task. Most benchmarks suggest that Laravel is faster than other frameworks when it comes to application speed. In older versions, Laravel outperformed Symfony.
Still, as Symfony 4+ matured, Laravel’s advantage virtually faded. The performance improvements that Laravel first mentioned could no longer be true. Laravel and Symfony’s performance evolution is seen in the graphic below.
Usually, the performance of the framework is judged by the time a request is made and the response is submitted. In the table, it is shown that Laravel takes significantly less time than Symfony. This shows that Laravel is faster than Symfony.
- Maintenance
It becomes easy to maintain web apps that are built on Laravel even after deployment, but Symfony is even more efficient and easily maintainable than Laravel. Also, Symfony allows developers to improve web app functionality.
- Scaffhandling
Using templates as a “scaffold” to build the application involves having a tool produce the basic code needed to automatically CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) data from your database.
Laravel does not provide a scaffolding tool, but it allows serval tools to integrate with it.
Symfony offers all the commands required for scaffolding the bundles, forms, controller, and CRUD-based backends.
- Security
Laravel comes with a security feature to create a robust, secure web application easily.
Symfony’s security system is a little complicated but is very powerful and allows for different ways of authentication and a permission model.
- Overall functionality
Laravel is flexible and scalable enough to develop a web application full of useful features and saves time and cost in the process.
But Symfony has more complicated functionality features which makes it more flexible than Laravel. Developers can deliver error-free projects using Symfony.
- Projects
Laravel’s built-in authentication, Artisan CLI, Database migration, and Object-relational mapping work particularly well for smaller-scale web applications which require quick implementations.
With unique features, Symfony can be a better choice for enterprise-level, complicated web applications such as an e-commerce store, or a music/video streaming app. Spotify, Trivago, and BlaBlaCar are well-known examples of applications built on Symfony.
(Image Source: HackerNoon )
- Scaling & modularity
Laravel excels at creating MVC-based applications. If you stray beyond the MVC paradigm, Laravel cannot help you. Where reusable components in Symfony enhance flexibility. Larger and more challenging web application development projects benefit greatly from its better code organization. As a result, many experienced PHP developers prefer Symfony over Laravel.
- Time taken for development
Applications using Laravel significantly take less time with minimal code and high-quality performance. While Symfony uses more effort in coding and more resources to create a full-stack web application. Thus, Laravel saves time and cost to develop a web app compared to Symfony.
Which one is better for which use
While Laravel is a better choice for smaller-scale solutions, Symfony is an ideal choice for enterprise-level solutions that requires more scalability and Customization.
Here are a few cases where Laravel and/or Symfony had been the better choices or if your projects require anything like those listed below, you’ll know which one to choose.
Use cases of Laravel
- Multilingual CMS systems
- E-learning website applications
- On-demand streaming website applications
- SaaS-based website applications
- Self-hosted web-performance tracking applications
- Website applications with recognition features and rewards
Use cases of Symfony
- Social networking websites
- Bulletin board software
- Intranet tools/software
- Single-page apps
- Enterprise-grade apps
- Content management system
Conclusion
Laravel and Symfony, both are excellent PHP frameworks with amazing features to build a web app solution.
However, it eventually comes down to your requirements to choose which framework should be appropriate. We hope this article has helped you understand the similarities and differences between Laravel and Symfony and provided the information needed to make an informed decision.
So, now according to your needs and requirements, you can hire Laravel developers or Symfony developers from ViitorCloud as our experts are up to date with the latest updates and available at your convenience.
Our clear communication and end-to-end support from planning to deploying your project will give you a clear idea of what has been happening and how far your project has gone through.
We provide different services such as web & mobile engineering, design & development, emerging technologies like Blockchain, AI/ML & AR/VR, and IT consultancy services.
