Phalcon vs Laravel

Difference Between Phalcon and Laravel

Phalcon is referred to as a web framework. It is a PHP framework based on the model view controller architecture or pattern. Andres Gutierrez mainly developed it. It was initially released in the year 2012. It is written in C and PHP. It supports different platforms like Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, and windows.

Phalcon is also referred to as Zephir/C extensions that are loaded together with PHP one time on the web server’s daemon start process. The code is not interpreted as it is already compiled to a specific platform and processor. These classes and functions are ready to use for any application. Phalcon has some basic features like low overhead, which helps in less memory consumption and CPU compared to other frameworks. In Phalcon, MVC and HMVC are used with the help of models, views, components, and controllers. The other features are dependency injection, Rest, AutoLoader, and Router.

Laravel is referred to as a PHP web framework. It is mainly based on the MVC pattern. It was developed by Taylor Otwell and initially released in the year 2011. Laravel has some features like a modular packaging system, different ways to access the database management system and application deployment and maintenance. It is written in PHP 7 language.

Laravel is robust and easy to understand. It reuses the existing components of different frameworks which helps in creating the web application. Laravel has excellent features to enhance the functionality and incorporates the basic features like Codeigniter, Yii, and other programming languages like Ruby on Rails. With the help of Laravel, the web application becomes more scalable and owing to the Laravel framework. It helps in saving time while designing the web application, and it includes namespaces and interfaces.

Head to Head Comparison Between Phalcon and Laravel (Infographics)

Below is the top 6 difference between Phalcon vs Laravel :

Key Differences between Phalcon vs Laravel

Both Phalcon vs Laravel are popular choices in the market; let us discuss some of the major Difference :

1. Phalcon has one of the fastest PHP frameworks as the framework extension built in C, which is extremely fast and efficient. Laravel comparatively slow framework as its mainly built on PHP and Symfony.
2. Phalcon use the volt template engine, which is mainly embedded into phalcon itself and takes its inspiration from the Jinja template engine. It has a very clear and understandable syntax. It complies very fast, and it avoids the bottleneck for frameworks overall speed. In laravel, we have Eloquent ORM, which is simple and fast. ORM helps in organizing the application database, and it supports most of the databases like MySQL, Postgres etc.
3. Phalcon has good performance and speed, whereas laravel has poor performance and less speed.
4. Phalcon requires good programming skills to understand, and you need to know C programming. For laravel, there is a need for programming skills to understand and write the code.
5. Phalcon has loosely coupled components and customizable with Zephir. Laravel comes with its command-line interface called Artisan. With this, the different tasks can be performed like database migration, seeding database, etc. It is mainly used for building REST APIs, resource routing and intuitive Eloquent CRUD, and it takes less time to write as well.
6. Phalcon is more flexible in terms of the project structure. Laravel is not that flexible like phalcon.
7. Phalcon does not have a good community and documentation as compared to Laravel. Laravel has a good community, and its documentation is thorough and very good. It covers everything and very helpful to experienced and new users alike. It makes it easy to write web apps with authentication capabilities and a fully powered authorized class.
8. Phalcon is difficult to learn, but it has less learning curve. Laravel is easy to learn, but it has a steep learning curve as sometimes features are updated in the new version, but there is no online document and support provided, which makes it difficult to understand and work it with.
9. Phalcon uses the Volt template system. Laravel has a very powerful template system called Blade.
10. Phalcon uses good design practices, whereas laravel follows bad design practices.
11. Phalcon need root access to install the PHP extension and framework. Laravel does not have such a problem. Laravel sometimes complicates debugging and autocompletion.

Phalcon vs Laravel Comparison Table

As you can see, there are many Comparisons between Phalcon vs Laravel. Let’s look at the top Comparison between Phalcon vs Laravel –

The basis Of Comparison	Phalcon	Laravel
Definition	It is based on a PHP web framework.	It is an open-source PHP web framework.
Developed	Andres Gutierrez has developed it.	It has been developed by Taylor Otwell.
Scalable	It is less scalable comparatively.	It is highly scalable compared to Phalcon.
Simple	It is complex comparatively.	It is simple.
Features	It has features like low overhead, MVC and HMVC etc.	It has basic features of PHP framework and symphony.
Website	Phalconphp.com	Laravel.com

Conclusion

Phalcon vs laravel both are web frameworks and based on PHP. It follows the same pattern or architecture; only that is Model View Controller. PHP is being used as a programming language in both frameworks when things come to development. Laravel has a rich template system which is a robust template. It has a built-in ORM, which works on traditional object-oriented programming or relational scheme. Phalcon used the Volt template engine, which is faster than ORM. Phalcon is mainly used for its faster execution.

Laravel is being popular than phalcon as it is having better documentation available, which helps beginners or new developers to understand and develop the web application in the same framework. Laravel uses the PHP framework’s basic features, which gives the edge to this framework over the phalcon. It has a greater and variety of collections of libraries to work and develop the app. It has a higher and bigger community to reach out to whenever any help is required.

Both Phalcon vs laravel are almost the same but have different pros and cons. It can be said that Laravel is mainly used over phalcon because it is widely used and popular. Some developers preferred to work with those frameworks that have larger community support and quick fix the defects. There is no harm in using the other because till the time we won’t explore the technology; we will not be able to work with or cannot be comfortable with that. So, it depends on the developer’s requirement and time to select the web application framework.

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