Both are good frameworks but with a very different approach. Laravel is way more opinionated, you do things the Laravel way. On the other hand Symfony is more

Both are good frameworks but with a very different approach. Laravel is way more opinionated, you do things the Laravel way. On the other hand Symfony is more flexible, you can use it as a full featured framework or use only the components you need. Laravel itself is built on top of Symfony components. For quick prototyping Laravel is probably better. It's community is also bigger and they have built many tools for every use case you can imagine. But as I said, you're stuck with their own way of doing things. Symfony is a bit tougher at first but more elegant. It allows you to write software the way you need. Its components are not tightly coupled and they don't get in your way. And I think it's easier for a Symfony developer to switch to Laravel than viceversa.