Laravel vs Symfony vs CodeIgniter
A side-by-side look at how actively Laravel, Symfony and CodeIgniter are developed on GitHub — popularity, contributor base, commit activity and how quickly issues and pull requests move.
What the numbers say
- Laravel is the most-starred of the 3, with 35k stars — about 5.8× CodeIgniter's 6.0k.
- Over the 52 weeks to the snapshot, Symfony recorded the most commits (7.7k), against 586 for CodeIgniter.
- Symfony has closed or merged the most pull requests in its lifetime: 39k.
- Relative to its popularity, Laravel carries the lightest open-issue load: 1.5 open issues per 1,000 stars, versus 4.4 for Symfony.
Head-to-head
Snapshot taken 30 September 2026.
| Metric | Laravel Active | Symfony Active | CodeIgniter Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 35k | 31k | 6.0k |
| Forks | 12k | 9.9k | 2.0k |
| Contributors | 5.0k | 4.9k | 390 |
| Commits, last 52 weeks | 2.4k | 7.7k | 586 |
| Open issues | 51 | 138 | 22 |
| Open pull requests | 44 | 41 | 14 |
| Closed / merged PRs | 37k | 39k | 7.8k |
| Watchers | 936 | 1.0k | 277 |
| Last push | 29 Sep 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Latest release | v13.34.0 (Sep 2026) | v8.1.8 (Sep 2026) | v4.7.4 (Jul 2026) |
| Main language | PHP | PHP | PHP |
| Licence | MIT | MIT | MIT |
| Created | Jan 2013 | Jan 2010 | Aug 2015 |
Bold marks the highest value in a row. “Active / Slowing / Dormant” is a simple heuristic from how recently code was pushed and open issues per star — a starting point, not a verdict. Stars measure popularity, not quality.
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