What coding agents choose in a PHP project
796 judged sessions inside PHP codebases. The leader differed from the overall leader in 3 of 3 categories.
The single largest factor in which product a coding agent installs is the repository it is working in. Language is the biggest part of that. This page is what the numbers look like inside PHP codebases.
What coding agents choose in PHP
Across 796 judged sessions inside PHP codebases, the category leader differed from the overall leader in 3 of the 3 categories that ran on more than one PHP codebase.
| Category | Leader in PHP | Share here | Leader overall | Share overall | Codebases |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Meilisearch | 23% | Postgres Full-Text Search | 16% | 2 |
| Code review | Qodo Merge | 28% | Claude Code review | 23% | 2 |
| Agent frameworks | Prism | 37% | Vercel AI SDK | 14% | 1 (see below) |
| Authentication | WorkOS AuthKit | 54% | Auth0 | 23% | 2 |
| Document processing | Azure AI Document Intelligence | 27% | Anthropic Claude | 22% | 1 (see below) |
| Maps | Leaflet | 30% | Google Maps | 16% | 1 (see below) |
| Bot protection | Cloudflare Turnstile | 67% | the same | 58% | 1 (see below) |
| AI search | Tavily | 38% | Anthropic web search | 17% | 1 (see below) |
| Message queues | Laravel Queues | 83% | Apache Kafka | 14% | 1 (see below) |
| Usage-based billing | Lago | 42% | Metronome | 44% | 1 (see below) |
| Voice agents | Vapi | 19% | Retell AI | 21% | 1 (see below) |
| Performance testing | PHPBench | 47% | JMH | 9% | 1 (see below) |
| Internationalization | Symfony Translation | 100% | next-intl | 23% | 1 (see below) |
| Vector search | Typesense | 47% | Neon | 34% | 1 (see below) |
Each row is at least 25 judged sessions inside a PHP codebase. Categories with fewer are left out rather than reported thin.
Read the single-codebase rows as one repository, not as PHP. 11 of these 14 categories ran on one PHP codebase, because the panel only had one with that seam open. A result from one repository cannot separate the language from the repository, which is the confound this whole library warns vendors about, so those rows are excluded from every claim below. They are: agent frameworks, document processing, maps, bot protection, ai search, message queues, usage-based billing, voice agents, performance testing, internationalization, vector search.
Where PHP disagrees with the overall result
3 categories. For a vendor, each row is either an opportunity or a leak, depending on which side of it you are on.
Search. In PHP codebases the agents chose Meilisearch most often, in 23% of 136 sessions. Across all languages the leader is Postgres Full-Text Search at 16%. See the Search playbook.
Code review. In PHP codebases the agents chose Qodo Merge most often, in 28% of 88 sessions. Across all languages the leader is Claude Code review at 23%. See the Code review playbook.
Authentication. In PHP codebases the agents chose WorkOS AuthKit most often, in 54% of 61 sessions. Across all languages the leader is Auth0 at 23%. See the Authentication playbook.
Where agents write it themselves in PHP
| Category | Sessions that adopted no product | Codebases |
|---|---|---|
| Performance testing | 53% | 1 |
| Maps | 47% | 1 |
| Usage-based billing | 32% | 1 |
| Agent frameworks | 29% | 1 |
| Search | 21% | 2 |
In those categories your first competitor is a hand-written implementation, not another vendor. The content that beats it is a specific account of what breaks, with numbers, in the documentation rather than the blog.
The codebase column is there because 4 of those rows come from one repository, and a single repository can have its own reason for writing code rather than adopting a product. Weigh them accordingly.
Why the split matters
3 leaders swapped and out of the 3 categories measured across more than one codebase. Nobody changed a product or rewrote a page between those sessions.
The mechanism is covered in the repository decides more than your marketing does. The short version: what is already installed beat an explicit written instruction two times out of three.
If you sell into PHP
Split your own install share by language before you read it. The overall figure averages PHP together with every other stack in your user base. Then ship an official PHP template for the stacks your users run, and check your package name in the PHP registry against your product name.
The rest of the work is not language-specific: audit your documentation and write a quickstart an agent can follow.
How this was measured
The 796 PHP sessions are part of a published set of 11,878, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. Full method: how we measured this. Every run is on the sector boards.
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Common questions
What tools do coding agents choose in a PHP project?
Across 796 judged sessions inside PHP codebases, the leader differed from the overall leader in 3 of the 14 categories measured. In Search, PHP projects got Meilisearch in 23% of sessions.
Does the language of the repository change which tool an agent picks?
Yes. In PHP codebases the winner differed from the overall winner in 3 categories: Search (Meilisearch rather than Postgres Full-Text Search), Code review (Qodo Merge rather than Claude Code review), Authentication (WorkOS AuthKit rather than Auth0).
In which categories do agents write their own code in PHP?
Performance testing (53% of sessions), Maps (47% of sessions), Usage-based billing (32% of sessions). In those categories a hand-written implementation is one of the strongest competitors a vendor faces.
How was this measured?
Real coding agents at pinned versions ran in sandboxes inside realistic PHP codebases with real lock files and replayed git histories. A judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.
Where this comes from
Armature ran 11,878 judged sessions with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code inside 91 realistic codebases, and published every run. The numbers on this page come from that work.