Laravel
Open SourceThe PHP Framework for Web Artisans.
Published 29 May 2026 · Last updated 27 September 2026
Scores
Popularity2/5
The dominant PHP framework; constrained by PHP's declining new-project popularity.
Learning Curve3/5
Artisan CLI and Eloquent ORM ease onboarding, but service container and facades take time.
Flexibility4/5
Service container and Facades are extensible; most components can be swapped.
Performance4/5
Efficient for PHP; Octane with Swoole or RoadRunner makes it genuinely fast under load.
Portability3/5
PHP-Laravel patterns transfer partially within the PHP ecosystem; switching costs are real.
About Laravel
Laravel is the most popular PHP framework for modern web development, created by Taylor Otwell in 2011 and released under the MIT licence. It follows the MVC pattern and is built on the idea that web development should be enjoyable: its syntax prioritises readability, and its conventions settle the boilerplate decisions most frameworks leave to the developer.
Eloquent is Laravel's ActiveRecord ORM: model classes declare relationships (hasMany, belongsTo, morphTo), and Laravel generates the SQL, handles eager loading, and fires model events. Artisan, the built-in CLI, generates code and runs migrations, seeders, queues, and scheduled tasks, while Blade templates support components, inheritance, and directives. Queues, events, broadcasting, caching, mail, and authentication are all part of the framework.
Official starter kits for React, Svelte, Vue, and Livewire scaffold a full app with login, registration, and two-factor authentication. Laravel ships a new major version each year, and recent releases require PHP 8.3 or later.
Around the free framework sits a large first-party ecosystem: Laravel Cloud and Forge for hosting and server management, Vapor for serverless AWS deployment, Nova for admin panels, Nightwatch for monitoring, Horizon for Redis queue dashboards, Sanctum and Passport for API authentication, and Cashier for Stripe and Paddle billing. Most applications need few third-party packages as a result.
Key Features
- Eloquent ActiveRecord ORM with relationships, eager loading, and model events
- Artisan CLI for code generation, migrations, queues, and scheduled tasks
- Blade templating with components and inheritance
- Queues, events, broadcasting, caching, and mail built in
- Official React, Svelte, Vue, and Livewire starter kits with auth and 2FA
- Sanctum and Passport for API token and OAuth authentication
- First-party hosting and tooling: Laravel Cloud, Forge, Vapor, Nova, Horizon
- Yearly major releases with thorough upgrade guides
Pros
- Most popular PHP framework, with the largest community and talent pool
- Readable, expressive syntax that keeps code maintainable
- Eloquent and Artisan make common database and CLI work very fast
- First-party packages and hosting cover most production needs
- Excellent documentation and learning resources (Laracasts)
Cons
- Overkill for tiny projects or single-endpoint APIs
- Conventions and magic methods take time to learn and can hide behaviour
- Slower than bare PHP or micro-frameworks without caching or Octane
- Eloquent makes N+1 queries easy to write without eager loading
- Yearly major versions mean regular upgrade work
Laravel Pricing
Open SourceTech Stacks with Laravel
HTMX + Laravel
ProjectA PHP stack combining Laravel's Blade templating with HTMX for dynamic interactions. Server returns Blade-rendered HTML fragments that HTMX swaps into the page. Familiar territory for PHP developers wanting modern interactivity.
Laravel Starter
ProjectPHP web application built with Laravel, the batteries-included framework, with Blade templates.
Tools Related to Laravel
Child tools of Laravel(1)
Laravel Fortify is Laravel's official headless authentication backend, maintained by the Laravel team.
Works well with Laravel(4)
HTMX works with any server framework that returns HTML — Laravel's Blade templates return partial HTML fragments that HTMX swaps into the page.
Laravel apps that use Livewire, including the official Livewire starter kit, get Alpine.js bundled for client-side interactivity in Blade templates without a separate JavaScript framework.
Tailwind CSS is Laravel's default styling choice: every official starter kit (React, Svelte, Vue, and Livewire) is built with Tailwind, and new apps include it through Vite.
Auth0's official Laravel SDK plugs into Laravel's authentication guards and middleware, so routes are protected by Auth0 sessions or access tokens without writing the OAuth flow by hand.
Integrates with Laravel(4)
Laravel + Vue is the canonical Laravel SPA stack — Laravel Inertia.js with Vue is the official first-party pattern for building single-page apps on top of Laravel without a separate API.
Laravel + React is a full-stack PHP pattern — Laravel Inertia.js with React is a first-party supported option for building React SPAs backed by a Laravel API without a separate JSON API layer.
New Laravel applications use SQLite as the default database since Laravel 11, with the database file created during installation.
Laravel Cashier is Laravel's first-party Stripe billing package, handling subscriptions, invoices, and webhooks through Eloquent models instead of raw Stripe API calls.
Built on (1)
Laravel is a PHP web application framework with elegant syntax.
Alternatives to Laravel(8)
Both batteries-included MVC frameworks; Laravel uses PHP, Rails uses Ruby — same convention-over-configuration philosophy.
Both batteries-included MVC frameworks; Django uses Python, Laravel uses PHP — similar philosophy, different language ecosystems.
Laravel is a PHP batteries-included MVC framework with built-in auth, queues, and ORM; FastAPI is a Python async-first framework focused on APIs — different language ecosystems and scope, both capable backend choices.
NestJS is a TypeScript/Node.js framework; Laravel is a PHP MVC framework — different language ecosystems.
Spring Boot is a Java enterprise framework; Laravel is a PHP MVC framework — both opinionated, different language ecosystems.
Flask is a minimal Python framework; Laravel is a PHP MVC framework — different language ecosystems.
