StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Review
  4. Code Review
  5. PHPStan vs PMD

PHPStan vs PMD

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

PMD
PMD
Stacks46
Followers111
Votes0
GitHub Stars5.2K
Forks1.5K
PHPStan
PHPStan
Stacks418
Followers99
Votes0
GitHub Stars13.7K
Forks933

PMD vs PHPStan: What are the differences?

Developers describe PMD as "An extensible cross-language static code analyzer". It is a source code analyzer. It finds common programming flaws like unused variables, empty catch blocks, unnecessary object creation, and so forth. It includes CPD, the copy-paste-detector. On the other hand, PHPStan is detailed as "PHP Static Analysis Tool - discover bugs in your code without running it!". It focuses on finding errors in your code without actually running it. It catches whole classes of bugs even before you write tests for the code. It moves PHP closer to compiled languages in the sense that the correctness of each line of the code can be checked before you run the actual line.

PMD and PHPStan can be categorized as "Code Review" tools.

Some of the features offered by PMD are:

  • supports multiple languages
  • enforce a coding standard for your codebase
  • built-in checks

On the other hand, PHPStan provides the following key features:

  • Static Analysis Tool
  • Focuses on finding errors in your code without actually running it
  • Extensible

PMD and PHPStan are both open source tools. It seems that PHPStan with 7.35K GitHub stars and 535 forks on GitHub has more adoption than PMD with 2.45K GitHub stars and 835 GitHub forks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Detailed Comparison

PMD
PMD
PHPStan
PHPStan

It is a source code analyzer. It finds common programming flaws like unused variables, empty catch blocks, unnecessary object creation, and so forth. It includes CPD, the copy-paste-detector.

It focuses on finding errors in your code without actually running it. It catches whole classes of bugs even before you write tests for the code. It moves PHP closer to compiled languages in the sense that the correctness of each line of the code can be checked before you run the actual line.

supports multiple languages; enforce a coding standard for your codebase; built-in checks
Static Analysis Tool ;Focuses on finding errors in your code without actually running it;Extensible;
Statistics
GitHub Stars
5.2K
GitHub Stars
13.7K
GitHub Forks
1.5K
GitHub Forks
933
Stacks
46
Stacks
418
Followers
111
Followers
99
Votes
0
Votes
0
Integrations
Gradle
Gradle
Windows
Windows
Java
Java
Linux
Linux
macOS
macOS
Drupal
Drupal
WordPress
WordPress
Laravel
Laravel
PHP
PHP
Symfony
Symfony
Yii
Yii
Nette Framework
Nette Framework
Typo3
Typo3
Zend Framework
Zend Framework
Doctrine 2
Doctrine 2

What are some alternatives to PMD, PHPStan?

Code Climate

Code Climate

After each Git push, Code Climate analyzes your code for complexity, duplication, and common smells to determine changes in quality and surface technical debt hotspots.

Codacy

Codacy

Codacy automates code reviews and monitors code quality on every commit and pull request on more than 40 programming languages reporting back the impact of every commit or PR, issues concerning code style, best practices and security.

Phabricator

Phabricator

Phabricator is a collection of open source web applications that help software companies build better software.

PullReview

PullReview

PullReview helps Ruby and Rails developers to develop new features cleanly, on-time, and with confidence by automatically reviewing their code.

Gerrit Code Review

Gerrit Code Review

Gerrit is a self-hosted pre-commit code review tool. It serves as a Git hosting server with option to comment incoming changes. It is highly configurable and extensible with default guarding policies, webhooks, project access control and more.

SonarQube

SonarQube

SonarQube provides an overview of the overall health of your source code and even more importantly, it highlights issues found on new code. With a Quality Gate set on your project, you will simply fix the Leak and start mechanically improving.

RuboCop

RuboCop

RuboCop is a Ruby static code analyzer. Out of the box it will enforce many of the guidelines outlined in the community Ruby Style Guide.

CodeFactor.io

CodeFactor.io

CodeFactor.io automatically and continuously tracks code quality with every GitHub or BitBucket commit and pull request, helping software developers save time in code reviews and efficiently tackle technical debt.

ESLint

ESLint

A pluggable and configurable linter tool for identifying and reporting on patterns in JavaScript. Maintain your code quality with ease.

Amazon CodeGuru

Amazon CodeGuru

It is a machine learning service for automated code reviews and application performance recommendations. It helps you find the most expensive lines of code that hurt application performance and keep you up all night troubleshooting, then gives you specific recommendations to fix or improve your code.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana