Make PHP great again █

Fast to run. Easy to use.

Fast

The application loads once and serves requests as a real server. No PHP-FPM, no bootstrapping on every request.

Easy

Typed actions, named services, ordinary PHP. One way to do each thing keeps the important parts visible.

Built-in

Routing, validation, databases, queues, scheduling, authentication, HTTP, streaming, and WebSockets on one small foundation.

Benchmarks

ReactPHP and AMP are HTTP libraries, not full application frameworks. Each uses a router, explicit input validation and its native async MySQL driver.

Intel Core i5-9400F · 2 CPU / 2 GiB RAM limit per app (shared host). Frameworks tested 2026-11-10; ReactPHP and AMP tested separately 2026-11-11. Separate runs, not a simultaneous comparison. Framework results · ReactPHP / AMP results · Run it yourself ↗

One command starts the application

HTTP, queue workers, and the scheduler start together. No Supervisor config, no systemd unit per worker, no crontab line. List the queue and the scheduler in app.php, then start.

$ php cua start --daemon
Starting my-app server on http://127.0.0.1:8080

  Server    Workers  Runs
  http      2        http://127.0.0.1:8080
  queue     3        queue:work: mail x1, default x2
  schedule  1        schedule:work

--daemon

Runs in the background and returns once it is up. A worker that dies is started again.

reload

HTTP, the queue, and the scheduler get the new code together, without refusing a connection.

status

Every worker, what it has handled, and its memory, in one table.

Deployment guide →

Included

• Routing typed parameters and groups
• Actions classes that say what they need
• Validation input checked before your action
• Views with Arc HTML pages, layouts and components; an optional package
• Database SQLite and MySQL, async when needed
• Queues durable work outside a request
• AI applications streaming, runs, and actors
• Testing requests without a server
• Deployment a server you can operate

A route is just a route

// routes/web.php
use Crab\Route;

Route::get('/hello/{name}', static function (string $name): array {
    return ['hello' => $name];
});

Written for agents too

Explicit types, no hidden state, one way to do each thing. The same things that make code easy for a person to read make it easy for a coding agent to get right.

$ php cua describe routes
routes
  POST /orders -> App\Actions\PlaceOrder via Crab\Auth\TokenAuth
    body { lines: Array<{ productId: int; quantity?: int | null (minimum=1, maximum=20, default=1) }> (minItems=1, maxItems=20) }
    user: App\User
  GET /products/{id} -> App\Actions\ShowProduct
    {id}: int

describe

The whole application in one read: routes and what each takes, middleware, commands, schedule, listeners, databases, settings. One thing per line, in few tokens. --json gives JSON Schema.

AGENTS.md

Every new app ships with one: where things go, the rules a long-lived server needs, and how to check the work.

Preflight

describe app lists settings that do not fit and services that cannot be made, before start refuses them.

Markdown

The guide is plain Markdown, in vendor/crabphp/framework/docs/ and at /llms.txt.

Describing the application →