PHP frameworks are extremely useful tools that help developers build clean, tidy, and structured web applications while also speeding up the process of creating and maintaining them. Here, we will introduce the top 10 most popular PHP frameworks (in no particular order).
Laravel
Arguably the most popular PHP framework today, Laravel is powerful, elegant, and easy to learn and use.
Flight
Flight is a fast, simple, and extensible micro PHP framework that allows users to quickly build RESTful web applications. It is equally easy to learn and use — simple yet powerful!
Yii
Yii is a high-performance PHP framework for developing Web 2.0 applications. It comes with a rich set of features: MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, authentication, role-based access control, scaffolding, testing, and more.
Medoo
Medoo is the lightest PHP database framework, consisting of just a single 10.9 KB file — a powerful micro-framework perfectly suited for simple small web app development.
PHPixie
This framework originated from the Kohana framework and is my personal favorite: it is MVC-compatible, quick to master, and powerful — you should give it a try too!
CodeIgniter
Although it is a relatively old framework and may be on its way out, I still really like this powerful MVC framework, CI. I have used it countless times in my projects and never lost faith in it — it remains my go-to choice!
Kohana
Kohana is an open-source, object-oriented MVC web framework built using PHP 5. It is developed by a team of volunteers who aim for speed, security, and a small footprint.
Symfony
Created in 2005, this is a very powerful MVC framework that is extremely popular in the enterprise world. Symfony was inspired by numerous web application frameworks — Ruby on Rails, Django, and Spring — and is possibly the most complete PHP framework available.
Pop PHP
While many PHP frameworks are beautiful but complex, Pop was built with all experience levels in mind. It provides a manageable learning curve for beginners getting familiar with PHP basics while still offering robust and powerful features for experienced developers. Its size is under 2 MB.
Phalcon
Phalcon is an open-source, full-stack PHP framework written as a high-performance C-like extension for PHP 5. Users do not need to know C; Phalcon provides PHP classes. It is loosely coupled, allowing users to freely use its components to build web applications.