PHP Community Chooses Best Libraries of 2024: Annual Voting Results

PHP Community Has Chosen the Best Libraries of 2024

The annual vote for the best PHP libraries has concluded. Thousands of developers from around the world cast their votes for tools that make PHP development faster, more secure, and more convenient. The PythonLib editorial team presents the official results and a brief overview of the winners in key categories.

Voting Methodology

The survey organizers — the portal PHP.Community and the magazine PHP Architect — collected nominations via GitHub and Twitter. The final list included 40 libraries divided into 8 categories. Each participant could cast one vote in each category. A total of over 12,000 valid responses were received.

Winners in Main Categories

• Framework of the Year — Laravel (54% of votes). The Laravel ecosystem continues to dominate thanks to its convenience, built-in ORM Eloquent, and active community.
• ORM / Database — Doctrine ORM (42%). A stable and flexible tool for working with databases, which overtook Propel and RedBeanPHP.
• Logging — Monolog (67%). The perennial leader: PSR-3 support, numerous handlers, and ease of integration.
• HTTP Client — Guzzle (49%). A popular PSR-18 client used in most modern projects.
• Template Engine — Twig (51%). A flexible and secure template engine that often pairs with Symfony.
• API Work — Laravel Sanctum (38%). A lightweight solution for SPA and mobile application authentication.
• Testing — PHPUnit (72%). The de facto standard for unit testing in PHP.
• Package Manager — Composer (89%). An absolute record of votes — an indispensable tool for every PHP developer.

Unexpected Discoveries of the Year

This year, the Laravel Octane library burst into the rankings, taking second place in the "Performance" category (32%). It allows running Laravel on high-performance servers (RoadRunner, Swoole) and significantly speeding up request processing. Also worth noting is the growing popularity of PHPStan — the static code analyzer received 44% of votes in the "Code Quality" category, overtaking Psalm (29%).

What This Means for PHP Developers

The voting results confirm the trend towards the Laravel ecosystem, but also show sustained demand for universal libraries (Monolog, Guzzle, PHPUnit). If you are just starting to learn PHP or want to update your technology stack, pay attention to the winners. They are proven by thousands of projects and receive regular updates.

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