2025 Best PHP Micro Frameworks: Slim, Flight, Fat-Free, Lumen, and More!

Web Frameworks PHP Framework Developer Tools

Twig Landing Page
1

Twig

Twig - The flexible, fast, and secure template engine for PHP
Pricing:
- Open Source
Simplicity: Getting started is a breeze—install via Composer, define some routes, and you’re off. Scaling up? Add middleware or libs like Twig or Eloquent as needed.

#Web Frameworks #PHP MVC Framework #PHP Framework 40 social mentions
Laravel Landing Page
2

Laravel

A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
Pricing:
- Open Source
Lumen sneaks into our top four as Laravel’s little sibling, designed for microservices and APIs. It’s got a minimalist vibe, but here’s the tea: it’s basically Laravel Lite, carrying some of the same heft under the hood. While it’s fast for a Laravel offshoot, its performance lags behind true micro frameworks like Flight or Slim—check the TechEmpower benchmarks for proof.

#Developer Tools #Web Frameworks #PHP Framework 240 social mentions
Laravel Lumen Landing Page

3

Laravel Lumen

Contribute to laravel/lumen development by creating an account on GitHub.

Popularity: Lumen’s got 7.6k GitHub stars and a decent following, but its 2024 buzz was quieter than Flight’s meteoric rise. It leans hard on Laravel’s ecosystem, which is great if you’re already in that world, less so if you want something standalone.

#Web Frameworks #PHP Framework #JavaScript Framework 2 social mentions
Composer Landing Page
4

Composer

Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP.
Pricing:
- Open Source
Simplicity: Getting started is a breeze—install via Composer, define some routes, and you’re off. Scaling up? Add middleware or libs like Twig or Eloquent as needed.

#Development Tools #Javascript UI Libraries #JavaScript Framework 143 social mentions