Phpactor
Mainly a PHP Language Server with more features than you can shake a stick at (by phpactor)
PHPStan
PHP Static Analysis Tool - discover bugs in your code without running it! (by phpstan)
| Phpactor | PHPStan | |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | 66 | |
| 1,693 | 13,569 | |
| 0.9% | 0.4% | |
| 8.3 | 9.9 | |
| about 1 month ago | 6 days ago | |
| PHP | PHP | |
| MIT License | MIT License |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Phpactor
Posts with mentions or reviews of Phpactor.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-12-22.
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Setting up neovim for Laravel development
PHP Actor is a free alternative that includes the core features you'd expect from an LSP.
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VSCode for PHP and Laravel
# Download phpactor.phar curl -Lo phpactor.phar https://github.com/phpactor/phpactor/releases/latest/download/phpactor.phar
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Sharing my Laravel language server integration progress
The other path is a pull request on https://github.com/phpactor/phpactor/pull/1991 which takes care of the lsp side of things.
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Best Neovim PHP IDE option?
Even I'm a PHPStorm user. I still have neovim installed and using there PHPActor: https://github.com/phpactor/phpactor
- What would be better VS Code or PHP Storm?
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How could I make vim generate boilerplate from my php file every time I create a new file in my project?
Or use phpactor/phpactor with a template to always get it right.
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Working on improved LSP tooling for Laravel blade bringing intellisense to all editors!
Now experimenting more by exposing public properties of a Livewire component via https://github.com/phpactor/phpactor in blade files.
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Does anyone use vim to develop in PHP with Symfony?
Im using this https://github.com/phpactor/phpactor with ncm2 with ale. Im quite happy with it.
PHPStan
Posts with mentions or reviews of PHPStan.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-08-21.
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Enhancing Laravel Code Quality with Larastan
It internally uses PHPStan, one of the most respected tools for static analysis in PHP.
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Laravel Filament Multipanel Starter - Build your app fast
PHPStan for static analysis
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Code Quality Check with PHPStan
Ensuring clean, maintainable code is vital in any Laravel project. While PHPStan is an excellent static analysis tool for identifying code issues, the raw JSON output it generates isn’t always human-friendly. That’s where a custom reporting script comes in handy.
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Laravel Filament Backend Starter – Build your admin panel fast
Dev-friendly tools with Laravel Debugbar, PHPStan for static analysis and Pint for consistent code formatting
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PHP: errors to avoid with constructors
PHPStan: composer require --dev phpstan/phpstan
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Build a Symfony 7 boilerplate using FrankenPHP, Docker, PostgreSQL and php 8.4
To do so simply install the runtime/frankenphp-symfony composer package. Then we install the bare minimum for a kick ass developer experience, a linter using Code Sniffer, phpstan as code quality audit tool, Rector to ease and automate code maintenance, some useful Symfony components and package and of course the Doctrine ORM. Here the composer.json file located at the symfony folder root.
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How to Avoid Adding New Code that Uses Deprecated Code?
At DinnerBooking, we've tackled this challenge using PHPStan. Here’s how:
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Rector keeps your PHP code base fresh and perfect
As part of the journey to PHP perfection, you should embrace Rector. It's a amazing, free, and open-source tool for migrations, code quality, type coverage, pushing PHPStan to the highest levels, and yes, it can even auto-fix your existing code! It seamlessly integrates into the CI process, making your development workflow smoother than ever.
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8 Essential Tools Every PHP Developer Needs
PHPStan focuses on finding errors in PHP code without running it. It captures all types of errors, even before you write tests. It brings PHP closer to compiled languages by checking the correctness of each line of code before execution.
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Laravel code-quality tools
PHPStan is a static analysis tool for PHP. Larastan is a package built on top of PHPStan to make it easier to integrate with Laravel projects. PHPStan works by "sniffing" the code using the various rulesets applied to it and determine if it follows the standards. However, Larastan doesn't fully follow the definition of "static analysis" since it has to boot the application's container and resolve the types that can only be computed at runtime. This is why Larastan is called a "code analysis" tool rather than a "static analysis" tool.
What are some alternatives?
When comparing Phpactor and PHPStan you can also consider the following projects:
vscode-intelephense - PHP intellisense for Visual Studio Code
Psalm - A PHP static analysis tool for finding errors and security vulnerabilities in PHP applications
Rector - Instant Upgrades and Automated Refactoring of any PHP 5.3+ code
phan - Phan is a static analyzer for PHP. Phan prefers to avoid false-positives and attempts to prove incorrectness rather than correctness.
WordPress Packagist - WordPress Packagist — manage your plugins with Composer
PHP Mess Detector - PHPMD is a spin-off project of PHP Depend and aims to be a PHP equivalent of the well known Java tool PMD. PHPMD can be seen as an user friendly frontend application for the raw metrics stream measured by PHP Depend.