PHP has been a cornerstone of web development for over two decades, powering millions of websites and web applications, including giants like Facebook and Wikipedia. For a while, PHP had a bit of a reputation problem, with many developers and tech pundits predicting its decline in favor of newer languages like JavaScript (with Node.js), Python, or Ruby. Yet, here we are in 2024, and PHP is not only alive but thriving again.
So what happened? Why is PHP gaining popularity, especially when so many were ready to write it off? In this article, we’ll explore some key reasons why PHP is making a comeback and why you might want to give it a second look if you’re a developer or a business looking to build robust web applications.
1. Modern PHP is Fast and Efficient
One of the main reasons PHP got a bad rap in the past was its perceived performance issues. However, since the release of PHP 7 in 2015 and the subsequent improvements in PHP 8 and beyond, the language has seen massive performance enhancements. These updates drastically reduced memory usage and execution time, making PHP one of the fastest scripting languages available for web development.
In fact, benchmarks show that PHP 8.2 (released in December 2023) is almost three times faster than PHP 5.x, which was the norm just a few years ago. The performance improvements, combined with PHP’s low barrier to entry and wide hosting availability, make it an excellent choice for building high-traffic applications without breaking the bank on server costs.
2. PHP 8 Features Are Game-Changing
PHP 8 and 8.1 introduced new, modern features that have made the language more robust, secure, and easy to work with. Some key features include:
JIT (Just-In-Time) Compilation: JIT optimizes the execution of PHP code by compiling it into machine code at runtime, greatly improving performance for certain tasks.
Union Types and Named Arguments: These new typing features make PHP code more predictable and maintainable, closing the gap with more strongly-typed languages like Java or C#.
Attributes (Annotations): These allow developers to add metadata to their classes and methods, which makes frameworks like Symfony and Laravel even more powerful and intuitive to use.
These modern features make PHP feel more like a first-class language for today’s web development needs, keeping it relevant and competitive against newer technologies.
3. Laravel’s Continued Dominance
One of PHP's biggest strengths in recent years has been its ecosystem, and no framework has done more for PHP's modern-day relevance than Laravel. Laravel, the most popular PHP framework, has made PHP development faster, easier, and more enjoyable for developers by offering:
A clean and elegant syntax
Integrated tools for routing, authentication, and database management
An extensive library of packages to extend functionality
A vibrant, active community that continues to push the boundaries of what PHP can do
Laravel's influence has been so strong that many developers who might have otherwise avoided PHP have embraced it because of the framework's productivity benefits. And with each new version, Laravel continues to attract newcomers and experienced developers alike.
4. The PHP Ecosystem is Evolving
Beyond Laravel, the broader PHP ecosystem is alive and evolving. Composer, PHP’s package manager, has become a central part of modern PHP development, providing access to thousands of libraries and tools. With a growing number of high-quality open-source packages, PHP developers have a vibrant ecosystem to draw from when building applications.
Additionally, new tools like RoadRunner (a high-performance PHP application server) and PHP-FPM have redefined how we deploy and run PHP applications, bringing it closer to the speed and scalability of languages like Go or Node.js.
5. Widespread Hosting Support and Easy Deployment
One of the biggest reasons for PHP's resurgence is its simplicity in terms of hosting and deployment. Nearly every web host in the world supports PHP out of the box, and it’s one of the cheapest languages to host due to its widespread use.
With the rise of cloud-native applications and platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and DigitalOcean offering easy-to-setup LAMP stacks (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), developers can deploy PHP applications quickly and at low cost. This has made PHP particularly attractive for startups, small businesses, and freelancers who want to get a website or app live with minimal hassle.
6. PHP Is Still the Web’s Backbone
Let’s not forget that 79% of the web still runs on PHP, according to W3Techs. While newer languages have certainly gained ground, PHP remains the go-to for many of the world’s largest and most-visited websites. With such a massive install base, businesses and developers continue to invest in PHP because it's familiar, reliable, and supported by a vast community of developers.
Moreover, popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal—which power over a third of the world’s websites—are all built on PHP. This ensures that PHP continues to have a huge presence in the digital landscape.
7. Backward Compatibility and Developer Familiarity
For many seasoned developers, PHP is a known quantity. It’s been around for a long time, and most web developers have at least some experience with it. Unlike more experimental or rapidly changing languages, PHP has maintained excellent backward compatibility, meaning that existing PHP applications can be updated or extended without needing to rewrite huge chunks of code.
This is particularly important for businesses with large legacy systems that need ongoing support and updates. PHP’s longevity and backward compatibility make it a safe choice for maintaining old systems while also modernizing them with the latest language features.
A Language Reborn
In 2024, PHP is far from obsolete. Thanks to its dramatic performance improvements, modern features, vibrant frameworks like Laravel, and a vast ecosystem, PHP has once again become a top choice for developers. It may have been overshadowed in recent years by trendier languages, but its reliability, speed, and widespread hosting options make it a practical solution for building everything from small websites to large-scale web applications.
If you’ve written off PHP in the past, now might be the time to reconsider it. With its modern capabilities and an ever-growing developer community, PHP is proving that it’s here to stay—maybe stronger than ever.
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Top comments (39)
it could be so, but look at the job market. Only a small fraction on jobs are focused on php.
I just looked at the stats and it seems that php is dominating because of wordpress, which is understandable, easy to create websites.
When it comes to serious custom data, I believe other tech is being used. Don't get me wrong, i am a php dev, I am just looking at the trends and job market. There is about 10% of jobs that are asking for PHP and their salary is mediocre.
I totally see your point, and you're right—PHP does dominate in areas like WordPress, which makes sense given how easy it is to spin up websites with it. But I also agree that when it comes to more complex, custom applications, other tech stacks are getting a lot of attention.
The job market trends do show a shift, especially with technologies like Node.js, Python, and modern front-end frameworks gaining traction. As a fellow PHP dev, it’s tough to see that reflected in the number of job postings and, sometimes, even the salaries. But it's worth noting that PHP still dominates in many regions, especially in Asia, where it's widely used across industries. Laravel, for example, is still quite popular for building sophisticated apps.
It’ll be interesting to see how the demand evolves, though. Who knows, maybe PHP will get a resurgence in the future with newer use cases ☺️
Honestly, nice response, I enjoyed reading it. You are completely right in each paragraph.
After 20 years in php I am adding more to the mix with Python and vue/react to have more options and be able to break the architecture into services.
I have very little experience with Laravel, I am using Yii2 framework, I like lighter frameworks. One of my biggest issues with laravel is that it includes a web service which is required to run it. it does not go well with me. It is a php framework, throw it on whatever server you need and run the site. But this is my own opinion.
again, love the response.
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your kind words—it’s great to hear you enjoyed the response. Best of luck to both of us as we continue evolving in our careers!
"One of my biggest issues with Laravel is that it includes a web service which is required to run" - What required web service are you referring to? I assume you are talking about the "php artisan serve" command. This is not necessary, but only a facilitation during development.
Ah, I see! Here’s a revised response that reflects that perspective:
Thanks for your comment! You make a good point about the job market, but it’s interesting to see how PHP's popularity can vary by region. In some areas, especially where WordPress dominates, PHP is still very much in demand. However, I’ve noticed that PHP is also gaining traction in regions where frameworks like Laravel and Symfony are becoming more popular for custom development projects.
While it's true that certain tech stacks may be preferred for specific use cases, PHP’s modernization and performance improvements, especially with PHP 8, are helping it stay competitive. The demand for PHP developers might not always be as visible as for some other technologies, but I think it’s experiencing a resurgence in various parts of the world.
The way I see this, working at an IT consultancy, is bigger companies tend to shift toward something like microservice architecture, so the monolithic PHP apps usually get left behind because it's cumbersome to set it up to run in something like AWS Lambda or Azure Functions, because it's not natively supported. It's also not fast enough. Languages like Java, Python, JS and Go dominate in those areas. Where I've seen PHP is companies that have one monolithic app that they develop and sell. It doesn't require too many developers, and in too many places (sadly) those developers have already created quite a mess over 10+ years with the application so nobody wants to work on it.
Even now I work for a company that has hundreds of microservices running in AWS and they're finally deprecating the last of their PHP applications (which were a bit monolithic in nature) in favor of Golang on the back-end, and JavaScript with Vue.js on the front-end.
What do you mean by "laravel is that it includes a web service which is required"?
The default installation of laravel includes a dev server, which you run to access the application.
It is good for new devs who don't know how to setup the local dev env to run a php application, but that makes laravel more bloated.
My opinion is that a framework is good when it is small and light and flexible to adapt more plugins, the ones that you need to use for a specific project.
Laravel has gone from being just a php framework to be a dev ecosystem, which is great for some projects. There is always a trade off, when more staff put into that system, it becomes slower, with more complex architecture and code there is more chance something can go wrong.
I am not discouraging anybody, just explaining my point of view, that's all.
The serve command is just a shortcut for the PHP Built-in Webserver php.net/manual/en/features.command..., something PHP has out of the box, so the point of using it is to start testing your application as fast as you could, you just need to install PHP, Composer and your application is up (if you don't need anything else, of course). But if you already have Nginx installed, there is no point at all, just use it. It's not wise to use the Builtin Webserver in production. So i see no issues here.
If you like small frameworks like Slim, Flight and etc - so use it. Yii 2, for instance, also gone beyond being just a simple PHP Framework, not to say about Yii3 which is already Production ready. It's all matter of what exactly you are trying to archive.
I spent 5+ years with Yii2 too but it's very much outdated now, they stopped investing in favor of 3rd version, even Alex Makarov said that already. Laravel on the other hand has very vast community and support not only from backenders, but also from frontend devs, so that's why it has a lot of tools/libs/integrations with modern stuff. So again it is matter of tasks.
Absolutely.
I've worked with web frameworks with both PHP and Python... and for all the love there is of Python, setting up an efficient web server with a Python app (e.g. Flask) is still a royal PITA. The documentation (for actually running such apps on a server) is poor, unstandardized, inconsistent... and nobody seems to be in charge.
PHP, for all of its age, works efficiently out-of-the-box with the apache modules, and doesn't throw me any mysterious curve balls.
YMMV, of course. But if you know of really good server-setup-doc for Python/Flask/whatever, I'd love to hear about it. wchasroth@gmail.com.
I agree, for python there is no well maintained guide for deploying apps, for me i just built my own production ready using following steps:
For Laravel/PHP apps, it's kind of similar as well but with PHP-FPM
I totally get where you're coming from! I’ve mostly worked with Python apps using FastAPI, and I found Uvicorn to be pretty straightforward for that setup, but I haven’t personally tried it with Flask. It could be worth looking into, though, since Uvicorn is an ASGI server and is generally efficient for handling async tasks.
That said, Python's web server setup can definitely feel more scattered compared to PHP's out-of-the-box efficiency with Apache. Documentation varies a lot between frameworks, so it’s easy to hit roadblocks. If you decide to give Uvicorn a shot, it might be a smoother experience, but I'd be interested to hear how it goes for Flask too!
PHP has been disappearing for years. Annual surveys of the most used languages in the world have shown that PHP has been losing ground for some time now. It has never taken first place, but in recent years it has fallen from fourth, fifth place to tenth, fifteenth. I really like it, I have been using it for over fifteen years, but I had to remove it from my main language in order to continue evolving... not to mention the market, the market stopped asking for PHP about 5 years ago...
That's a valid point! The rise of PHP frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and Yii has definitely shifted the landscape, leading many developers to rely on these tools rather than using PHP natively. While frameworks can enhance productivity and provide useful features, it might contribute to the perception that PHP itself is declining in popularity.
Well... the right thing to do would be for the language to expand as a framework grows (Laravel did this in the beginning, and did it very well), but the result became less about the language and more about the framework. I saw them do a good job for years, but today it is no longer a reference.
Everywhere I look, some vendor or other is offering AI agents to assist with generating code. However, I don't really see that many AI tools targeting PHP. How many PHP and particularly Laravel developers out there are using AI assistants, I wonder?
I believe most of the AI tools have php support. I am using Tabnine pro for that matter with Yii framework. There is Continue and Co-pilot.
I am switching to Python soon and I am very curious if Tabnine is going to work better on python than it did on PHP or is it just vscode problem.
AI assistants are good, but you need to know how to talk to them to get what you need. Lately it's been helping me a lot. It is good especially with small logical pieces that go over multiple lines of code, where there is a lot of typing.
I am using Yii framework, can't say about Laravel, not using it.
That's an interesting observation! While AI tools for languages like Python or JavaScript seem to dominate the conversation, there are still some useful AI assistants available for PHP and Laravel. Tools like GitHub Copilot, Codeium, Continue.dev, and even PHPStorm (which has AI-powered features through integrations) support PHP and can assist with code suggestions, refactoring, and error correction. Some Laravel developers are leveraging these tools to streamline repetitive tasks, generate boilerplate code, and enhance their overall workflow.
That said, it might not be as widely discussed because PHP is often seen as more "mature," with a lot of well-established patterns, libraries, and frameworks like Laravel that already optimize development processes. But I'd be curious to hear how many in the community are adopting AI assistants for their PHP projects too!
I use Laravel without AI Assistants. They are unnecessary.
I noticed TabbyML (selfhosted alternative to github copilot with local LLMs like starcoder) has much better completion with typescript than PHP.
@jenueldev Might also wanna mention frankenphp.dev/ a PHP SAPI written in Go, which can be used as part of Caddy, or as a standalone Go package:pkg.go.dev/github.com/dunglas/fran...
PHP-FPM itself, it's pretty old school. It goes back to 2004 and was bundled with PHP in 5.3.3 release: php.net/archive/2010.php#id2010-07..., nearly 15 years ago.
Hey, thanks for the heads-up! This is actually my first time hearing about FrankenPHP—sounds really interesting! I’ll definitely check it out. It’s cool to see new innovations like this, especially with how old-school PHP-FPM is, as you mentioned. The fact that it’s been around since 2004 is wild, but it’s great to see tools like FrankenPHP potentially shaking things up for PHP devs. Appreciate the share!
Most welcome, there are lots of things moving and shaking in PHP lately. Another project that is pushing PHP forward is: nativephp.com/ which tries to bring PHP to desktop.
If you have any questions about Franken feel free to reach out.
Interesting thing to note, PHP 5 was always slower than Java/C, but not slower than it's more direct competition (python/ruby).
As a typescript fan, hopefully PHP 8+ new type system features also lead to further performance upgrades.
That's a great point! PHP 5 definitely had its performance challenges compared to languages like Java or C, but it held its own against Python and Ruby. With PHP 8+, the improvements to the type system have been exciting. It's not only helping with better code quality but also seems to be contributing to performance enhancements, especially with JIT compilation.
As a TypeScript fan, I can totally understand the appeal of a strong type system. PHP is definitely moving in that direction, and it's great to see the language evolving to keep up with modern development needs. Hopefully, we'll continue to see both performance gains and improved developer experience as PHP continues to evolve!
Great article! I completely agree that PHP’s comeback in 2024 is a testament to its adaptability & modern feature set. The improvements in PHP 7 and 8 have definitely addressed the performance & scalability concerns that held it back in the past. The addition of JIT; union types; & attributes has made PHP much more competitive with languages like Python and JavaScript.
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed the article and I completely agree with your points. PHP has really made significant strides with versions 7 and 8, addressing many of the concerns developers had about performance and scalability. The introduction of JIT, union types, and attributes has brought PHP to a whole new level, making it competitive with other major languages like Python and JavaScript. It’s been amazing to see how PHP continues to evolve, and 2024 really feels like a strong comeback year for the language!
I feel like two other important things were missed, FrankenPHP is taking the PHP world by storm with it's amazing speed, and while Laravel is getting all the attention, I feel like Symfony needs to get some credit, after all they're the ones we have to thank for composer even existing, not only that their components are used on virtually everything a PHP developer touches (including Laravel).
This is not your father's PHP, the language is growing and advancing as all good languages do, I'm excited with what the future brings to this language, it's never been a better time to learn and use PHP.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! You’re absolutely right—FrankenPHP has been generating a lot of buzz lately, and its speed is definitely something that deserves attention. As for Symfony, I completely agree. While Laravel often gets the spotlight, Symfony has been the backbone for many innovations in the PHP ecosystem. Composer, which revolutionized dependency management in PHP, and the wide use of Symfony components in frameworks like Laravel, are perfect examples of its far-reaching influence.
PHP really has evolved into a powerful, modern language. With new tools and frameworks pushing the boundaries, it’s an exciting time for developers. I’m glad you share the same enthusiasm for where PHP is headed, and I appreciate your insights!
There is no “unexpected comeback”, because there was no any step back in the first place. You may hate PHP but still it is the base of modern Internet.
reject modernity embrace tradition
thanks to HTMX, and humongous bloat of laravel devs now start to write vanilla PHP