Laravel 12 was released this month, which has kicked off the usual round of "which PHP framework is best" debates. We build client projects in both Laravel and CodeIgniter 4, and our answer is the boring one: it depends on the project. But we can be more specific than that.
The short version
- CodeIgniter 4 is small, fast, and easy to understand. It does less for you, which means there's less to learn and less to go wrong.
- Laravel is a full ecosystem. Queues, authentication starter kits, an ORM with a lot of features, first-party tools for testing, deployment, admin panels, real-time events. It does more for you, which means more to learn and more moving parts.
When we pick CodeIgniter 4
CodeIgniter makes sense for:
- Business websites with a custom admin panel (like the one this blog runs on).
- Small to mid-sized internal tools where the team wants to read the whole codebase in an afternoon.
- Projects that have to run on modest shared hosting. CI4 has very light requirements and doesn't need anything special on the server.
- Teams with junior developers. The learning curve is gentle.
It's also great for migrating older CodeIgniter 3 applications, which there are still a lot of in India. The concepts carry over, even if the code needs rewriting.
When we pick Laravel
Laravel is our choice for:
- SaaS products with subscriptions, teams, roles and billing.
- Applications with lots of background work: sending emails, generating reports, processing uploads.
- Projects where we'd otherwise spend weeks building things Laravel already provides, like authentication flows, notifications, or API rate limiting.
- Clients who want to hire developers later. The Laravel talent pool is large.
Laravel 12 itself is a fairly calm release. The big news is the new starter kits for React, Vue and Livewire, which replace Breeze and Jetstream. Most applications on Laravel 11 should upgrade without much drama.
Performance
People love to compare benchmarks. In practice, the framework is rarely the bottleneck. Slow database queries, missing caching and heavy pages matter far more. CodeIgniter is lighter out of the box, but a well-built Laravel app is plenty fast for almost any business.
Hosting and cost
CodeIgniter runs happily on a ₹3,000 a year shared hosting plan. Laravel can too, but you'll get the most from it on a VPS where you can run queue workers and scheduled tasks properly. That's a small but real difference in running costs for a small business.
Our honest take
If you're a business owner, don't pick a framework. Pick a team you trust and ask them why they're recommending what they're recommending. A good answer will talk about your project's needs, your hosting, and who will maintain it in three years. A bad answer will just be "it's the best one."
