PHP in 2025

Jetbrains, one of those companies most keyed-in to what developers want, recently released their State of PHP 2025 Survey results. While this is mostly marketing material for how cool their code editor is, it’s also a good pulse of devs—especially considering the alternative is scrolling through hot takes on Twitter.

It’s often claimed that upwards of 70% of websites online right now run on PHP. That’s a product of the time it was created and used more so than anything else. I think the percentage of modern adopters would probably be lower. Fortran is still normally in the top 10 of the TIOBE index, but that’s not because there are a bunch of young bloods so excited to GOTO.

Still Alive, but Why?

But what it does point out is something interesting. The first year of the survey in 2017, Laravel was still the largest framework for PHP at 44%—the next year was only 41%.

But over the last 5 years, Laravel has continued to climb and in 2025 now sits at 64%. I personally love the Laravel ecosystem and my bias is strong, so treat this next part with a grain of salt. There is something that originally drew people to adopt PHP, and it was overwhelmingly, undeniably Wordpress. Back in the golden years of the web, the hardest part was actually getting a website online. How does the world talk to my computer with these gorgeous HTML 3 files?

The LAMP stack and Wordpress were a match made in heaven for the early 2000s Web Dev. Easy to build, and run, and deploy. Sort of. You did have all of those various massive security holes, but hey, it was online. In the modern web, the issue is no longer getting a site online. It’s very easy to do with any SquareSpace look-a-like. But if you’re planning to build something, usually you don’t want to build it all from scratch.

Batteries Included

Enter the Next, Nuxt, Adonis, Laravel, Rails, ASP.NET world where everything is already there. But really in that list, there are only two that have all of the pieces you need. Laravel devs are particularly annoying about just how much comes with the framework, but it’s for good reason.

So more than anything, I think this survey shows that shift. Whether it’s PHP or Ruby or JS, the real want from devs is simplicity. Make it work and make it easy. It’s what we’ve always wanted, and not it’s right in our hands.

In Closing

TL;DR: Use Laravel, it’s great, and it’s easy to write.

I’d also like to give a special shout out to the 32% of people last year that don’t write any tests for their code. Thanks for keeping me in business.

Until next time, peace & long live Laravel.