Laravel vs Symfony: Which One to Choose in 2025?

Which is better: Symfony vs Laravel?

Let’s see how one stacks against the other based on different parameters.

Popularity

For those just about starting out, Laravel is a more suitable option. It needs less configuration and is pretty straightforward compared to Symfony in terms of authentication, setup middleware, and pulling data using ORM.

As for the popularity of Symfony vs Laravel, the results clearly point to the latter. According to Google trends and GitHub stars, Laravel stands at 71.8k and Symfony at 27.8k.

Performance

Laravel uses Symfony components but scores better in application performance. Here’s a quick look at Symfony vs Laravel benchmarks.

According to ThinkMobiles, Laravel websites load in approximately 60 ms and Symfony websites load in approximately 250 ms.

Template engine

By default, Symfony uses the Twig template and Laravel uses Blade. Each has its own following, but the majority of users gear towards Blade.

Let’s see what Google trends shows.

ORM

Symfony uses Doctrine ORM, which is based on the Data Mapper pattern, while Laravel uses Eloquent, which is based on the Active Record pattern. This is a vital point to consider when comparing Laravel vs Symfony as the learning curve of Doctrine ORM is significantly more. While powerful, it takes a lot more time to get familiar with compared to Eloquent.

Model relationship

Doctrine supports four main relations: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. Meanwhile, Eloquent has more types of relations than Doctrine which can reduce development time if used properly.

Configuration

Symfony uses different types of configurations that may be a little harder to understand at first, such as .env, YAML, XML, and PHP. Note that Symfony developers are usually comfortable using YAML as configurations. On the other hand, Laravel uses only two types: .env and PHP.

Coding style

Although both frameworks are built on PHP, their coding styles are quite different in terms of routing, validation, file uploading, and working with request-response. As you already know, Laravel uses a significant number of Symfony packages, but it also uses many helper functions that simplify regular tasks.

Profiler/Debug-bar

By default, Symfony ships with a beautiful, enhanced, and developer-friendly debug bar. On the other hand, Laravel doesn’t ship with any and you need to install it manually. With Symfony, you even get AJAX request’s info right in the debug bar, and will be able to see every detail you need.

Form

If you don’t plan to use a front-end JS library or framework like React or Vue then Symfony’s Form component is one of the most powerful. Once you’re adept at using it, you’ll find that it can reduce your work by around 60 percent.

Entity and relationship generation

Using the Symfony console, you’ll be able to generate entities and relationships which saves considerable time. However, Laravel doesn’t support this at present.

Conclusion

We’ve learned the pros and cons of Laravel vs Symfony as well as some of their differences and similarities. By now, you should have a fair understanding of which framework will work best for you.

When starting a project, the plan is always to write beautiful code, maintain its readability, and follow SOLID principles - Single Responsibility Principle (SRP), Open/Closed Principle, Liskov’s Substitution Principle (LSP), Interface Segregation Principle (ISP), Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) - as much as possible.

Unfortunately, things don’t always turn out this way, especially when there are several hands at work. However, if your organization practices pull requests for code review and encourages devs to refactor code for better readability and maintainability, it doesn’t really matter which framework you choose.