I use Laravel because you don't have to re-invent the wheel when compared to core PHP. We can focus directly on business logic. And the little learning curve for Laravel is worth it. Can't really compare with Laravel with Symfony as I haven't worked with Symfony yet. My suggestion would be to pick one and stick to it. If at all you have to move to other, it should be easy. Last thing I would like to add is that there are more people around who knows Laravel compared to PHP, may be that's why I started with Laravel.