What is Flight?

Flight is a fast, simple, extensible framework for PHP—built for developers who want to get things done quickly, with zero fuss. Whether you're building a classic web app, a blazing-fast API, or experimenting with the latest AI-powered tools, Flight's low footprint and straightforward design make it a perfect fit.

Why Choose Flight?

Beginner Friendly: Flight is a great starting point for new PHP developers. Its clear structure and simple syntax help you learn web development without getting lost in boilerplate.
Loved by Pros: Experienced devs love Flight for its flexibility and control. You can scale from a tiny prototype to a full-featured app without switching frameworks.
AI Friendly: Flight's minimal overhead and clean architecture make it ideal for integrating AI tools and APIs. Whether you're building smart chatbots, AI-driven dashboards, or just want to experiment, Flight gets out of your way so you can focus on what matters. Learn more about using AI with Flight

Quick Start

First, install it with Composer:

composer require flightphp/core

Or you can download a zip of the repo here. Then you'd have a basic index.php file like the following:

<?php

// if installed with composer
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
// or if installed manually by zip file
// require 'flight/Flight.php';

Flight::route('/', function() {
  echo 'hello world!';
});

Flight::route('/json', function() {
  Flight::json(['hello' => 'world']);
});

Flight::start();

That's it! You have a basic Flight application. You can now run this file with php -S localhost:8000 and visit http://localhost:8000 in your browser to see the output.

Simple enough, right?

Learn more about Flight in the documentation!

Is it fast?

Absolutely! Flight is one of the fastest PHP frameworks out there. Its lightweight core means less overhead and more speed—perfect for both traditional apps and modern AI-powered projects. You can see all the benchmarks at TechEmpower

See the benchmark below with some other popular PHP frameworks.

Framework	Plaintext Reqs/sec	JSON Reqs/sec
Flight	190,421	182,491
Yii	145,749	131,434
Fat-Free	139,238	133,952
Slim	89,588	87,348
Phalcon	95,911	87,675
Symfony	65,053	63,237
Lumen	40,572	39,700
Laravel	26,657	26,901
CodeIgniter	20,628	19,901

Skeleton/Boilerplate App

There's an example app to help you get started with Flight. Check out flightphp/skeleton for a ready-to-go project, or visit the examples page for inspiration. Want to see how AI fits in? Explore AI-powered examples.

Community

We're on Matrix Chat

And Discord

Contributing

There are two ways you can contribute to Flight:

Contribute to the core framework by visiting the core repository.
Help make the docs better! This documentation website is hosted on Github. If you spot an error or want to improve something, feel free to submit a pull request. We love updates and new ideas—especially around AI and new tech!

Requirements

Flight requires PHP 7.4 or greater.

Note: PHP 7.4 is supported because at the current time of writing (2024) PHP 7.4 is the default version for some LTS Linux distributions. Forcing a move to PHP >8 would cause a lot of heartburn for those users. The framework also supports PHP >8.

License

Flight is released under the MIT license.