Laravel Vs CodeIgniter 2021: Top 14 Differences, Comparisons, Pros & Cons

The market is dominated by a series of web applications in the market like Flickr, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, and many more.

You too, can make a website or web application like these great brands just by choosing the right PHP framework to work with. In the present times, 244 million websites are powered by PHP. So, why not establish your business with the same!

Building custom solutions for a business with a plethora of options of PHP framework in the market requires a wise decision. Even though there are hundreds of options to choose from, Laravel and CodeIgniter are the ones that are in the battle and are quite popular within the community.

The choice may have come down to two options, but the decision is still tough. With different demands and project requirements, it becomes vital to have the utmost knowledge of both the PHP framework.

So, to help you get a comprehensive understanding of both PHP frameworks, the below-mentioned guide including, comparison, advantages, and disadvantages of both will help you make an informed decision.

Introduction

What is Laravel?

Laravel is open source and the most commonly preferred PHP framework. Initially, this framework was intended for web application development utilizing the MVC architectural pattern. GitHub hosts the source code of this PHP framework as it is released under the MIT license.

With the help of this PHP framework, the task of web developers has been eased out. It comes with expressive syntax and can work smoothly on tasks that come across in web projects like sessions, routing, caching, and authentication.

It includes all the basic features of the existing frameworks and reuses the existing functionality of the core framework, along with its features.

Projects developed utilizing Laravel are more manageable and structured as their framework is based on the model view controller (MVC) design pattern.

The web application constructed utilizing this framework resides in high-end security, and thus it eliminates the risk of any hacker’s attack.

From full-stack apps to the management of the SaaS products, Laravel does it all. All these attractive features make Laravel win the game among the other PHP framework available in the market.

The CakePHP website maintenance is another highlight of this PHP framework that offers secure authentication, data sanitization, flexible caching, High degree of compatibility with PHP versions 4 & 5 and so much more. Such website maintenance services keep the website up-to-date and secures it from any malicious attacks. You may contact any Laravel CakePHP Maintenance company to take care of your website.

Websites for the companies like BBC, Pfizer, and others are developed using the Laravel framework.

What is CodeIgniter?

A powerful PHP framework, CodeIgniter is ideal for developers who look for a simple and easy-to-use toolkit to construct web applications with great features. Even a beginner in the field can use it easily given its simple toolkit.

Built-in 2006, it makes the user independent by cutting out their dependency on MVC development pattern.

From generating dynamic websites utilizing PHP to third-party plugins that facilitate the use of complex functionalities, CodeIgniter makes it easy for the developers to develop an outstanding web application.

Companies like Udemy, Toast, and many others utilize CodeIgniter for their Web Development purpose.

Know the difference: Laravel and CodeIgniter

Reliability and Stability

In terms of reliability, Laravel is the better option since it is released under the MIT license and is hosted on GitHub. Due to this, this PHP framework is more reliable than CodeIgniter.

In terms of stability, the web application developed by CodeIgniter is more stable as compared to Laravel.

Community Support

Even though Laravel and CodeIgniter both are open-sourced, the community support is more in Laravel as compared to CodeIgniter.

Database Model

With a relationship object-oriented database model, Laravel stores the data into entities creating a relationship between inter-related tables.

In CodeIgniter, an object-oriented database model is utilized that stores the data as an object. The main work of this model is data encapsulation and inheritance.

Template engine

Laravel has an in-built template engine, Blade, while the latest version of CodeIgniter doesn’t have any template engine.

The template engine of Laravel further optimizes the performance of the web application which is not a chance in CodeIgniter.

While working with CodeIgniter, developers have to choose and use the most scalable template and configure it for robust app development.

HTTPS Support

Laravel has sufficient support for HTTPS supports, while CodeIgniter does not have it.

While utilizing its current version, developers enjoy the flexibility to define and establish custom HTTP routes.

In CodeIgniter, extra efforts of the developer are invested in developing the paths and then securing the data transmission.

Update and structure

With an uptight MVC architecture, developers working with Laravel can focus on a particular aspect of development.

Artisan feature in Laravel is an integrated command-line tool to create the skeleton code, database architecture, or for a migration purpose.

In CodeIgniter, the structure is loose as it rests on the object-oriented programming language. It offers a quick and easy on-boarding system here.

Modules Integration

Given the current version of Laravel, the project can be easily divided into smaller modules by the programmers with the help of bundles. The built-in Modularity feature has made this work possible in Laravel.

In CodeIgniter, modules are created by the programmer, and their maintenance is done simultaneously with the help of a Modular extension. No in-built modular features are available in CodeIgniter.

Unit testing support

An in-built testing tool referred to as PHPUnit comes as a feature in Laravel. It helps in the evaluation of application code through unit testing. This helps in keeping an eye on the bugs and errors in the application code from time to time and fixing them.

With no built-in unit testing support, CodeIgniter requires an additional tool just for testing the app performance.

Options of Routing

The particular path defined in any web application is defined as Routing.

Laravel follows explicit routing and ensures a great deal of flexibility for sending the routing request given to its best PHP latest framework.

Implicit and explicit, both kinds of routing are supported in CodeIgniter.

Although, in such a case, Laravel is chosen over CodeIgniter as it also provides reverse routing option.

Speed and Performance

Laravel community states that it can be optimized for better performance that will allow the web application to perform efficiently under 20ms.

For CodeIgniter, the average response time recorded in a functional test to run the application was 11.5 sec for 100 users. The time increased to 45.6 sec with 500 users and 26 sec with 1100 users.

Current trends and Popularity

The expressive coding style has made the popularity of Laravel touch the sky. In CodeIgniter, the usability and picking up on things is easy which makes beginners or web developers prefer it.

DBMS Support

Laravel is DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, OrientDB, ORACLE, Microsoft SQL Server, and JDBC compatible.

CodeIgniter supports other popular databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and others along with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft BI, and MongoDB.

Ease of learning

Laravel is abode to tons of features that require utmost understanding and training through reliable and trusted sources. This makes it difficult for beginners to learn it.

In CodeIgniter, beginners can pick up things and learn on their own easily given its simple and easy-to-use toolkit.

ORM Support

Laravel enables you as a developer to benefit from eloquent object-relational mapping ORM.

In CodeIgniter, ORM is not supported, and that turns out to be a disadvantage for the same.

With all these important differences between Laravel and CodeIgniter, it’s time to learn about the pros and cons of each that will help you determine the best choice for you.

Advantages of Laravel

• With an inventory of lightweight templates, developers don’t have to struggle to find an appealing base for the website. For custom demands, templates can also be customized as per the demand of the project.
• You can find, log management, Namespaces, HHVM support, quality control sessions, and more all in Laravel.
• To track all the modifications made in data migration, schema builder in Laravel is an excellent feature to use.
• Repetitive tasks in Laravel are managed by a built-in feature known as Artisan. With this feature, the migration aspect and the task to write the base for the database structure become a cakewalk.
• Authentication in Laravel adds to the security of your website. With pure PHP code, it would take more lines of code (and work), while with Laravel, the authentication feature skyrockets the process as Laravel sets authentication with a single line.
• To create table structures, developers have to create SQL queries. Although, the Laravel framework utilizes migration which is similar to project-management systems that let you revert to the older versions of your project.
• It withstands and supports high volumes of traffic received on your business website.
• The secure website is another advantage of creating a web-based application that is known to prevent SQL injections. SQL injections are one of the dangerous attacks by hackers that cause the theft, or alteration of confidential information. It can also allow the hacker to get access to the operating system of the database server.
• Records can easily be managed as options of update, delete, and add new data to your database without using SQL are available in Laravel. It is all possible since Laravel transforms table columns into PHP class properties automatically.

Disadvantages of Laravel

• Community Support: Even though the Laravel community is large, the number of third parties library built and published is high. A person who is working on Laravel has to find out first which library is reliable and quality certified.
• Quality of Library: With the increase in third-party libraries, quality decreases of the same.
• Lightweight framework: This may come as an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Due to its lightweight nature, excessive backend congestion of database queries and ultimately lower performance of web applications is noticed with an increase in data congestion.
• Advantages of CodeIgniter
• With CodeIgniter, you can keep your URL SEO-friendly and short.
• With explicit documentation as one of the features of CodeIgniter, beginners can learn from the start and basics from trustworthy sources.
• Since it follows MVC architecture, different parts of your website are separated for better management of the same.
• From data validation and forms to a data encryption facility, CodeIgniter has it all.
• It also assists you in curating an email by integrating with multiple protocols, attaching the files, and sending the mail.
• The applications developed on the CodeIgniter platform will surpass your expectations in terms of performance aspect. This is due to the reason that it is lightweight as the main system needs only a couple of small libraries resulting in the high speed of the web applications.
• Developers don’t have to use any template engine, which is another factor contributing to the unmatchable performance of CodeIgniter.
• CodeIgniter prevents Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) given to its Cross-Site Scripting filtering. It happens when hackers attack and exploit information on websites that users already have authentication.

Disadvantages of CodeIgniter

• Slow growth: With fewer updates of CodeIgniter, the growth and development has become stagnant. It causes versions to go out of sync.
• Exhaustive Libraries: With exhaustive libraries on board, this PHP framework stays behind the new age launches and updates of other PHP frameworks.
• Tedious to maintain: To update, modify, and maintain the code, the developer’s time is consumed in a good amount which becomes tedious.
• Jaw-dropping Market statistics
• Laravel holds double the market share as compared to CodeIgniter. It can be further understood by the fact that Laravel is being used in 113 countries while CodeIgniter only in 43 countries.
• With 20.3k live projects and 544 dedicated contributors working on improving the real-time framework, Laravel has 63.5k GitHub stars.
• CodeIgniter has 7.8k forks on GitHub and enjoys 17.7k stars.

Final Words

With all the data in hand, it seems that Laravel has won the game. Although people have their preferences on which PHP Framework they want to work on. But with our research, the answer has been very clear. With all the info in your hand, you are more than ready to take the end decision on which PHP framework you want to work on.