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phalcon/cphalcon

★ 10,831PHPAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5LicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

Phalcon is a PHP web framework compiled as a C extension, giving you the familiar MVC structure of frameworks like Symfony at much higher speed and lower memory use because the framework runs at the PHP runtime level.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What It Does
      PHP web framework
      Compiled C extension
      High performance
    Features
      Routing
      Database access
      Templating
    Installation
      PIE installer
      PECL
      Build from source
    Platforms
      Linux
      macOS
      Windows
    Audience
      PHP developers
      Backend engineers
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Code map

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filefunction / class

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build high-traffic PHP web applications that need more throughput than Symfony or Laravel can provide on the same hardware.

USE CASE 2

Replace an existing PHP framework in a shared-hosting or memory-constrained environment where overhead matters.

USE CASE 3

Compile a custom Phalcon build from source to support a specific PHP version or platform configuration.

Tech stack

PHPCZephir

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires installing a compiled PHP extension via PIE, PECL, or building from source, not a simple composer require.

Free to use for any purpose including commercial projects, with attribution required and no warranty provided.

In plain English

Phalcon is a web framework for PHP, which is a popular programming language used to build websites and web applications. What makes Phalcon unusual is how it is delivered: instead of being a set of PHP files you drop into your project like most frameworks, Phalcon is written in C and installed as a compiled extension directly into the PHP runtime. This means the framework code runs at a much lower level than typical PHP, which is why it can handle more requests with less memory and CPU than frameworks that live entirely in PHP userspace. From the perspective of someone building a site, using Phalcon looks similar to other PHP frameworks. You write PHP code that uses classes for routing, database access, form handling, templating, and other common web tasks. The performance benefit comes transparently, because the framework itself is already compiled and loaded before your code even runs. Installing Phalcon requires adding an extension to your PHP setup rather than just running a package manager command. The README covers three ways to do this: through PIE, which is a newer PHP extension installer, through PECL, which is the older standard tool for PHP extensions, or by compiling from source if you need a custom build. Once installed, it works on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and macOS. The source code in this repository is written in a language called Zephir, which is a higher-level language that compiles down to C. This makes the codebase easier to work on than raw C while still producing a compiled extension. The project is open source under the BSD 3-Clause license and has been in active development since 2011.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I have a PHP API built with Laravel that's getting slow under load. Walk me through migrating its routing and database layer to Phalcon, keeping the same URL structure.
Prompt 2
Show me how to install the Phalcon extension using PECL on Ubuntu and then create a minimal MVC app with routing, a controller, and a Volt template.
Prompt 3
How does Phalcon's dependency injection container work compared to Laravel's? Give me a side-by-side example of registering and resolving a service in both.
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