# Laravel 71 Hacker News commenters recommended Laravel and 24 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Developers praise its smooth, well documented, batteries-included defaults for building web apps fast. The most common caveat is worry about ads and VC funding. ## Why people recommend it - Fast development and code generation (5 comments): "PHP is faster to develop in then Pythin or JS then addin a framework like Laravel and you are already done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47338325)) "lots of magic, pretty much always one recommended way to do things, excellent code generation using CLI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46927930)) "Go with Laravel and some admin packages and you generate CRUD pages in minutes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46432882)) - Batteries included, works out of the box (4 comments): "I don't have to make decisions about the parts of the application that aren't unique to what I'm building" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48923937)) "a batteries included framework (like Laravel or Django) makes HTMX even more appealing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314101)) "very solid framework solutions like Laravel where everything works out of the box" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290346)) - Smooth development experience (4 comments): "The development experience is almost always really smooth and there are more and more tools to further smoothen that experience every day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893698)) "get their projects online as smoothly as possible, so that hopefully they become a long-lasting member of our awesome community." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47797822)) "It worked great and we hadn't encountered business problems that couldn't be fairly easily solved within the ecosystem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806987)) - Excellent, well documented (3 comments): "Laravel is probably the most well documented frameworks even comparing frameworks from other languages." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46004557)) "Laravel is ahead -> on documentation & bringing various ways to do things into the framework." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45995825)) "one of the most comprehensive and best developer experiences around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227117)) ## What people warn about - Ads and VC funding concerns (7 comments): "it muddies the boundaries between paid and free, it sends a signal to developers to look elsewhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48440244)) "he's clearly moved from "build a framework" to "build a platform" that drives money to his pockets." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47807981)) "Laravel is shit because the optional, not required by default Boost package includes an ad" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47797569)) - Large, bloated codebase (3 comments): "Laravel ITS A HUGE CODEBASE and a high risk for any real software project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49843696)) "a huge bloated framework uses more tokens as the LLM might read the source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49869888)) "how many novice developers learn bad practices from its awful architecture" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794856)) - Quirky defaults and PHP warts (3 comments): "I regularly encounter and suffer from unmodified instances of Laravel's default session cookie timeout of 120 minutes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47218641)) "The default Laravel project that's generated when choosing React looks really bad to me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276533)) "it feels like its trying its hardest to lipstick the PHP warts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46001419)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Ruby on Rails](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ruby-on-rails.md): 337 recommend - [Django](https://hackerapproved.com/p/django.md): 277 recommend - [Next.js](https://hackerapproved.com/p/next-js.md): 127 recommend - [Phoenix Framework](https://hackerapproved.com/p/phoenix.md): 85 recommend - [SvelteKit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sveltekit.md): 67 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Laravel", https://hackerapproved.com/p/laravel/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).