PHP Frameworks

Symfony

Symfony is a flexible, scalable, and high performance framework for PHP an dweb applications. Mostly it is used for larger enterprise demands. It has more than 25k stars on GitHub and used by a lot of big enterprise websites.

CodeIgniter

Know for being a lightweight framework with a small footprint and high performance. CodeIgniter totes being an easy to learn and setup system. Not a super widely used framework but they do have a dedicated user base with over 19k stars on GitHub. This framework is typically used for smaller to medium sized projects.

Laravel

A more widely used framework then the last two. They have a lot of tools for thing slike routing and authentication. With a large community it makes this framework a decent choice for beginners. Laravel is ranked in the most popular PHP frameworks consistently with over 70k stars on GitHub. Laravel is used by both small companies and large enterprises.

Summary

The three frameworks I researched are among some of the more popular but each have their strengths and weaknesses. The choice, wether it be these three or another depends on your specific requirements on a project and even your preferences as a developer. As of now I'm not sure which of these or another I would prefer.