Monolith¶
A monolith refers to an application that is built and deployed as one single, tightly integrated codebase.
The monolith concept is not specific to PHP: it applies to other programming languages.
In a monolithic application, all concerns live in one project, may it be routing, controller, business logic, database, views, logging, authentication, etc. Everything is deployed together, and a change in one part usually requires the deployment of all of the monolith.
The opposite of a monolith is micro-services.
In PHP ecosystems, monoliths are often preferred unless scale or team size truly demands microservices.
See also Decoupling a monolithic PHP application: a practical example, PHP Monolith to Microservices: When to Split Web Applications, Microservices vs. Monolith: A PHP Developer’s Guide to Architecture Decisions in 2025 and Migrating a PHP monolith in production: how I think about it.
Related : Microservice, Application
