About PHP Insights
PHP Insights is a console tool that checks the quality of PHP code. It is meant to simplify analysis directly from the terminal and serve as a starting point for assessing the health of a PHP project, covering code quality and coding style along with complexity and architecture concerns.
After installing it with Composer you run a single command to get a report in the console. Laravel projects get a dedicated flow where the configuration file is published first and then customized. The tool was created by Nuno Maduro, who also publishes videos and live coding sessions about it. Repository topics include static analysis, code quality, complexity, architecture and CLI.
PHP Insights is MIT-licensed and runs wherever PHP and Composer do, usually on a developer machine or in a CI pipeline, so no server is needed. It suits PHP and Laravel developers who want fast feedback on code health without assembling several separate linters.
Key features
- Code quality analysis from the console
- Coding style checks
- Complexity and architecture insights
- Laravel configuration support
- Installation through Composer
- Suitable for CI pipelines
Good fit for
- →Code quality gates for PHP projects
- →Quick health checks on legacy code
- Built with
- PHP
- Tags
- php
- static-analysis
- code-quality
- cli
- laravel
- linting
- complexity
PHP Insights: questions and answers
- What is PHP Insights used for?
- PHP Insights is a command-line tool that analyzes PHP code quality, coding style, complexity and architecture, with Laravel support. It is a good fit for code quality gates for PHP projects and quick health checks on legacy code.
- Is PHP Insights open source?
- Yes. PHP Insights is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at nunomaduro/phpinsights and is written mainly in PHP.
- Is PHP Insights free?
- Yes. PHP Insights is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- What are some alternatives to PHP Insights?
- Similar open-source tools in the Developer Tools category include PhpMetrics, golangci-lint and Revive. SaaS products in the same category include Debtdrone, act101 and Codacy.
- Is PHP Insights actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to PHP Insights was on 15 September 2026, and the latest release is v2.15.0, published on 15 September 2026. The project has 5.6k stars on GitHub.
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