API Platform is an MIT-licensed, PHP-based next-generation web framework for building API-first projects, aimed at backend and full-stack teams that want to expose hypermedia REST and GraphQL APIs from plain PHP data models without leaving the Symfony and JavaScript ecosystems they already know.

What it is

API Platform is a framework for creating API-first projects. A developer designs a data model as plain old PHP classes or imports an existing ontology with the schema generator, and the framework exposes that model as a hypermedia REST API or a GraphQL API with pagination, data validation, access control, relation embedding, filters, and error handling already wired in. Content negotiation is handled out of the box across GraphQL, JSON-LD, Hydra, HAL, JSON:API, YAML, JSON, XML, and CSV, and the API documentation is generated automatically in OpenAPI format. The server component is built on top of Symfony, while client components leverage React, with Vue.js flavors also available, so existing Symfony bundles and React components can be reused.

The concrete problem it solves is the repetitive plumbing that sits between a domain model and a usable API surface. Instead of hand-writing serialization, pagination, filtering, access control, documentation, and an administration interface, a team declares the model once and the framework produces the API, the docs, the admin, and the client scaffolds. It also exposes structured data in Linked Data formats, which means the API is usable by semantic web technologies and Google can leverage those formats for SEO.

Key capabilities

• Scaffolds new projects through the api-platform installer, for example api-platform my-app --framework=symfony --with-docker --with-pwa or api-platform my-app --framework=laravel.
• Generates hypermedia REST or GraphQL APIs with pagination, data validation, access control, relation embedding, filters, and error handling.
• Performs content negotiation across GraphQL, JSON-LD, Hydra, HAL, JSON:API, YAML, JSON, XML, and CSV.
• Publishes automatically generated OpenAPI documentation.
• Adds a Material Design administration interface built with React without writing a line of code.
• Scaffolds Progressive Web Apps and mobile apps with the client generator for Next.js (React), Nuxt.js (Vue.js), and React Native, plus a Vue.js generator.
• Supports OAuth authentication, Docker and Kubernetes deployment, an API testing tool, and optional data providers beyond the default Doctrine ORM, including MongoDB and Elasticsearch.

Who uses it and how

• Symfony teams that need to layer an API onto an existing application and want to reuse Symfony bundles, React components, and existing skills.
• API-first product teams that need both REST and GraphQL from a single data model rather than maintaining two implementations.
• Teams that want an admin interface and PWA or mobile client scaffolds generated from the same model, avoiding separate frontend boilerplate.
• Operations groups that install a development environment and deploy to production with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Publishers of structured data who rely on JSON-LD and Hydra for semantic web compatibility and improved SEO.

Getting started

The recommended path is the static binary: download the latest release for the platform from the Releases page, place it on $PATH, and run api-platform for the interactive wizard. With PHP and Composer installed, composer global require api-platform/installer provides the same binary in ~/.composer/vendor/bin.

How it compares

The facts provided list no paid products that this project replaces, and they name no direct alternatives, so API Platform stands alone in this registry. Its integration points are dependencies rather than competitors: Symfony on the server, React and Vue.js on the client, and Doctrine ORM as the default data layer.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster operates a PHP and Symfony application, and by default a Doctrine ORM data layer, with Docker and Kubernetes available for deployment if the generated setup is used. Teams with no PHP or Symfony background should not pick it, because the framework deliberately builds on that stack and its documentation assumes it. One honest limitation is that this repository hosts the api-platform installer used to scaffold new projects rather than the framework itself, so the official documentation lives on the API Platform website rather than in the repository.

curl -L https://github.com/api-platform/api-platform/releases/latest/download/api-platform-linux-x86_64 -o /usr/local/bin/api-platform
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/api-platform

composer global require api-platform/installer

api-platform                # interactive wizard
api-platform my-app --framework=symfony --with-docker --with-pwa
api-platform my-app --framework=laravel