Why Laravel Got Popular — A Symfony Developer's Perspective
As a long-time Symfony developer, I've often been asked: "Why did Laravel become so popular so quickly?" It's a fair question, especially for those of us who remember the early 2010s when PHP frameworks were in flux and Symfony was already maturing.
So here's a breakdown — from my perspective — of when Laravel took off, and why it became a favorite among PHP developers.
🕰️ When Did Laravel Get Popular?
Laravel was first released in 2011 by Taylor Otwell. While Symfony was already a solid choice for building enterprise-level applications, Laravel quickly gained attention for its fresh take on developer experience.
The real momentum started around 2013–2014, especially with the release of Laravel 4 and later Laravel 5. These versions introduced powerful tools and conventions that made the framework more accessible — particularly for solo developers and small teams.
By 2015, Laravel had taken off. It dominated GitHub stars, developer surveys, and job boards. It wasn’t just another PHP framework — it was becoming a movement.
✅ Why Laravel Became So Popular
1. Elegant Syntax and Developer-Centric Design
Laravel prioritized expressive, readable syntax. Where Symfony focused on flexibility and robustness (often with a steeper learning curve), Laravel made common tasks simple and enjoyable. This was a breath of fresh air for many PHP developers.
2. All-in-One Out of the Box
Laravel came bundled with:
- Eloquent ORM
- Blade templating
- Routing and Middleware
- Form validation
- Queues, events, and more
Sure, Symfony had (and still has) these features, but Laravel offered them pre-configured with sensible defaults, which accelerated development dramatically.
3. Artisan CLI
Laravel's Artisan command-line tool made code scaffolding, migrations, and task automation incredibly straightforward. Symfony has bin/console, but Artisan was early to make these tasks feel seamless.
4. Composer and Modern PHP Practices
Laravel embraced Composer early and effectively. It nudged the PHP community toward modern development practices — dependency injection, PSR standards, and modular code.
5. A Full Ecosystem
Taylor Otwell didn't just build a framework — he built an ecosystem:
- Forge for server management
- Envoyer for deployments
- Nova for admin panels
- Vapor for serverless applications
- Mix for asset compilation
These tools addressed real-world needs beyond the framework, and made Laravel a complete end-to-end solution.
6. Learning Curve & Documentation
Laravel’s documentation was friendly. Add to that Laracasts, which many call the "Netflix for developers", and you had a winning combo for onboarding new devs. Symfony has excellent docs now, but Laravel nailed the educational experience early on.
7. Clear Vision & Strong Leadership
Taylor Otwell has been an active, opinionated, and pragmatic leader. He listens to the community, iterates fast, and delivers polished features. That kind of leadership helped Laravel grow with consistency.
⚖️ Eloquent vs Doctrine: The ORM Tradeoff
While Laravel’s Eloquent ORM is praised for its simplicity, I’d argue that Doctrine ORM, Symfony’s default, is fundamentally more powerful — especially as projects scale in complexity.
Here’s why:
✔️ Doctrine Is a Data Mapper, Not Just an Active Record
Eloquent uses the Active Record pattern, meaning your models are tightly coupled to the database structure. This is fine for small to medium projects, but it becomes restrictive when your business logic starts to drift from the structure of your database.
Doctrine uses the Data Mapper pattern, which separates domain logic from persistence. This promotes cleaner architecture and makes it easier to implement DDD (Domain-Driven Design), CQRS, and rich domain models.
✔️ Better Abstraction and Flexibility
Doctrine lets you:
- Define custom repository classes
- Use embeddables and value objects
- Work with more advanced associations and lifecycle callbacks
- Choose between YAML, XML, or PHP annotations/configs
- Manually control persistence with the Unit of Work pattern
This level of control is crucial for enterprise applications or anything where the database is more than just CRUD.
✔️ More Predictable Queries
Eloquent’s magic is convenient, but it can lead to inefficient N+1 queries or complex joins hidden behind the scenes. Doctrine’s QueryBuilder or DQL (Doctrine Query Language) encourages more explicit and predictable querying.
🤔 So Where Does Symfony Stand?
Symfony is still my go-to for complex, enterprise-grade applications. Its architecture is robust, flexible, and built for scale. And let’s be honest — Laravel borrows quite a bit from Symfony under the hood (including using many Symfony components).
But Laravel? It absolutely nailed developer experience and onboarding. It’s opinionated, elegant, and fast to get started. It brought a lot of energy and modernity to the PHP community when we needed it most.
👋 Final Thoughts
Laravel made PHP cool again. As a Symfony dev, I admire what it brought to the table — and still does. It pushed the ecosystem forward, raised expectations for developer experience, and created a welcoming entry point for the next generation of PHP developers.
But when the time comes to model complex domains, manage custom persistence logic, or scale an app beyond its initial simplicity — I’ll take Doctrine over Eloquent any day.
And honestly? The choice between Symfony and Laravel is no longer about "which is better" — it’s about choosing the right tool for the right job.