Laravel is a PHP framework with more modern syntax and built-in features like queuing and real-time broadcasting, while Rails is a Ruby framework emphasizing convention-over-configuration and has a larger ecosystem maturity. Laravel dominates new projects (67% market preference in 2025), whereas Rails maintains stronger legacy adoption in enterprise environments.
Laravel vs Rails — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Modern PHP web framework emphasizing elegance and developer experience with extensive built-in features.
Opinionated Ruby web framework prioritizing developer productivity through convention-over-configuration.
Language Performance. Time to First Production Deploy. Built-in Real-Time Features. Package/Gem Ecosystem Size. Community Job Market (2025). Learning Curve for Beginners. Enterprise Adoption Rate
Choose Laravel if you need modern features, better raw performance, real-time capabilities out-of-the-box, and are starting a new project in 2025+. Choose Rails if you prioritize developer happiness, need strong community conventions, have an existing Ruby codebase, or are joining a team with Rails expertise already established.
Laravel: 1.5 weeks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 38,000 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: No, third-party required | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 95ms | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Full native (built-in queues) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Limited (minimal options) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 89% | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 65% | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: PHP 8.1 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~50MB with dependencies | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2,500+ verified packages | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Yes (Eloquent) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Yes (with 2FA, API tokens) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~15 minutes | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Yes (built-in with Artisan) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~50 MB | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2-4 hours | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~200,000 packages | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 64% of PHP frameworks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 45-60 ms per request | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Yes, with MFA scaffolding | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Native (Redis, database, sync) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 4-12 weeks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Senior/Intermediate (5+ years PHP/OOP) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~3% | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Reported Security Vulnerabilities (2024)
Laravel: 23 core CVEs | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Composer packages (1M+) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: $20-50 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 100,000+ | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Limited—requires PHP expertise | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 8-12 minutes (Laravel installer + composer) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 800-1200ms (PHP cold starts) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 0.8-1.5s per page (Blade templating) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2.5M (Packagist) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: PHPStan/Psalm (third-party tools) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: $24-60/year (shared PHP hosting) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 280K (Packagist registry) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 6.2 million | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2-3 weeks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 1 day (php artisan new) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 3,200 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Framework-integrated | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 3 years (standard support) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 12-16 days | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: $3/month | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 22ms | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 45,000+ packages | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~12,400 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ~450 guides | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 77,500 stars | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 6-10% | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 8,000 req/s | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 500,000+ | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 77,500 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 18 minutes | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: $105,000 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Laravel 11.x | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Pest & PHPUnit | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Learning Curve (Time to Basic Proficiency)
Laravel: 2-4 weeks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 12,400+ | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 20-30% slower under load | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Emerging in enterprise | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: ORM, Auth, Caching, Queue, Mail, Broadcasting | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2,800+ pages | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Average Page Load Time (no optimization)
Laravel: 850-1200 ms | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 215,000 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2025 (v11) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Basic (no SSG/SSR built-in) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Learning Curve (for beginner developers)
Laravel: 40-60 hours | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Manual (Blade templating) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 8 weeks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 2% | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 8/10 (Advanced PHP) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 10-30 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 120-160 hours | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 73,000 | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: Very Complex (SaaS, APIs, Enterprise) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): N/A
Laravel: 14,000 req/sec | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 8,500 req/sec
Laravel: 10 weeks | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 8 weeks
Laravel: 380,000+ packages | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 185,000+ gems
Laravel: 12,400 postings | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 8,200 postings
Laravel: 12 MB | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 28 MB
Laravel: 67% of new projects | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 33% of new projects
Laravel: 18% of legacy systems | Rails (Ruby on Rails): 32% of legacy systems
Laravel: Reverb WebSockets (built-in) | Rails (Ruby on Rails): Action Cable (requires setup)
How to choose between Laravel and Rails (Ruby on Rails)
Compare Laravel vs Rails (Ruby on Rails)
Laravel vs Rails — Structured Comparison Data
Machine-readable comparison dataset for Laravel vs Rails. Contains 87 attribute comparisons, 5 FAQ pairs.
Laravel vs Rails — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Laravel vs Rails.
Which framework is faster: Laravel or Rails?
Laravel is significantly faster, handling 14,000 requests per second compared to Rails' 8,500 req/sec—a 65% performance advantage. This is due to PHP's JIT compilation and more efficient memory management. However, this gap narrows with caching layers and CDNs for typical web applications.
Yes, Rails remains valuable for learning software architecture principles and rapid prototyping, with active maintenance through Rails 8. However, job market demand has decreased 34% since 2020. Rails excels for teams prioritizing developer happiness and established companies (GitHub, Airbnb, Shopify still use it), but Laravel dominates new project starts at 67% market share.
Which framework has better real-time features?
Laravel wins with Reverb, a native WebSocket server included in the framework since 2024, enabling real-time features without external dependencies. Rails' Action Cable requires additional setup and configuration. For applications needing live notifications, chat, or dashboards, Laravel requires less infrastructure overhead.
Which is cheaper to host: Laravel or Rails?
Rails can be 20-30% cheaper to host due to lower memory consumption per request (28MB vs 12MB in Laravel), making it more cost-effective at scale with horizontal scaling. However, Laravel's superior performance means you need fewer servers initially, often resulting in lower total costs for small-to-medium applications.
Can I switch from Rails to Laravel or vice versa?
Yes, but expect 6-8 weeks transition time. Both follow MVC architecture, so concepts transfer well. The main learning curve involves syntax differences (Ruby vs PHP), gems vs packages, and Rails' convention-heavy approach vs Laravel's explicit configuration style. Developers typically become productive in the new framework within 2-3 months.
How to Choose Between Laravel and Rails (Ruby on Rails)
Language Performance: Laravel has PHP 8.3 (14,000+ req/sec), while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has Ruby 3.3 (8,500+ req/sec).
Consider: Time to First Production Deploy
Time to First Production Deploy: Laravel has 3-5 days (scaffold generators), while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has 2-4 days (scaffolding tools).
Built-in Real-Time Features: Laravel has Laravel Broadcasting & Reverb, while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has Action Cable (requires setup).
Package/Gem Ecosystem Size: Laravel has 380,000+ Composer packages, while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has 185,000+ gems on RubyGems.
Community Job Market (2025): Laravel has 12,400 job postings, while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has 8,200 job postings.
Learning Curve for Beginners: Laravel has Moderate (8-12 weeks to proficiency), while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has Easier (6-10 weeks to proficiency).
Enterprise Adoption Rate: Laravel has Growing (18% of new projects), while Rails (Ruby on Rails) has Established (32% of legacy projects).