Hire PHP
developers in the UK.
Senior Laravel, Symfony and WordPress developers from our London team, from £49/hour (about £390 a day). Join your team as a dedicated developer or as a full team with QA, on a monthly rolling contract after the first four weeks. NDA on day one, and the code and IP are yours.
You can hire a senior PHP developer from Magora from £49/hour (about £390 a day), or a full team with QA and product ownership at £65-£70/hour. Laravel, Symfony, WordPress and native PHP; first commit usually 2 to 5 working days after the offer. The minimum engagement is four weeks, then monthly rolling. NDA on day one, code in your repository from the first commit, and IP transfers to you on payment.
Senior PHP developers,
from our own team.
Magora's own engineers, managed from our London office and backed by architects, QA and a Product Owner. Not freelancers we still have to find.
Laravel and Filament
Web platforms, APIs and admin panels in Laravel, with Filament, Livewire or Inertia, queues and Horizon. See our Laravel development company page or hire Laravel developers.
Symfony for long-lived products
API Platform, Doctrine and Messenger for regulated and enterprise products that have to stay easy to extend for years.
WordPress and Drupal
Custom plugins, Gutenberg blocks, headless WordPress, performance and security hardening. Drupal for large, multilingual content estates.
Modern PHP 8
Framework-free PHP for libraries, packages and lean services: enums, typed properties, readonly classes and PSR standards.
Legacy upgrades and takeovers
An audit, tests around the risky parts, then upgrades one step at a time (PHP version, framework, packages) while the application stays live. See legacy system modernisation.
Security and performance review
Static analysis with PHPStan or Larastan, a review against the OWASP Top 10, a dependency audit and a written, prioritised fix list.
Three ways to hire
PHP developers.
Pick the model by how settled your scope is. Detail on each is on our pages for dedicated development teams and IT staff augmentation.
| Dedicated team | Staff augmentation | Fixed-price project | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | PHP developers, QA and a tech lead or Product Owner, working only on your product | One or more senior PHP developers inside your own team | Magora's team delivering an agreed scope |
| Who manages the work | Magora (tech lead / Product Owner) | Your engineering lead | Magora |
| Best for | A product or roadmap that runs for months | An existing team that needs more senior capacity or a missing skill | A well-defined scope with a fixed end |
| Price | From £49/hour per developer; £65-£70/hour for a full team with QA and product ownership | From £49/hour per developer (about £390 a day) | Discovery from £3,000, then an agreed price for an agreed scope |
| Commitment | Minimum four weeks, then monthly rolling | Minimum four weeks, then monthly rolling | Until the scope is delivered |
| Changing scope | Re-prioritise the backlog any sprint | Your backlog, your call | Change request |
| First step | Free prototype, then a Discovery sprint if the scope is still open | Brief, shortlist, then meet the engineers (prototype optional) | Free prototype, then a two-week Discovery |
Not sure which fits? Book a call and we will say whether you need a team, two extra developers, or neither.
What it costs,
published.
These are Magora's published 2026 prices in pounds sterling. The exact figure depends on roles, seniority and full- or part-time allocation.
One PHP developer
About £390 a day, or about £7,800 a month full-time over 20 working days. Minimum four weeks, then monthly rolling.
Full team with QA
Developers plus QA and product ownership, for a product that needs an outcome delivered, not just extra hands.
Free working prototype
A clickable, coded prototype of your core idea in 5 to 10 working days, before any paid work.
Two-week Discovery
Scope, architecture and a fixed-price quote when the brief is still open. You can take the output to another agency.
No recruitment fee. For the wider market, read our UK software development pricing guide, see what 12 real UK projects cost, or try the cost calculator.
How you hire
and how we vet.
You see the people and the code before you commit, and the work runs inside your repository, your tracker and your code review.
Senior by default
Senior PHP engineers in front of you, with architects, QA and a Product Owner behind them for problems that need more than one person.
Meet them first
You meet the proposed engineers before they start. The team proposal names the people, their roles and seniority, and the rate for each, in writing.
Judge real code
A free working prototype in 5 to 10 working days shows how they think and code before you sign anything.
Brief
Day oneSkills, seniority, time-zone overlap, tools, and how long you need the developers. NDA on day one.
Shortlist
Matched to the briefPHP developers from our own team whose experience fits your stack and domain, with CVs and availability.
Meet and prototype
Before you commitYou meet the engineers. If you want, they build a free working prototype in 5 to 10 working days.
Onboard
First sprintAccess to your repository, tools and ceremonies, with first tickets in the first sprint. Weekly demos, code review and documentation throughout.
The actual
PHP stack.
What goes into a Magora PHP build: typed services, queues that survive deploys, and a domain model your team actually wants to extend.
- PHP 8.x
- SQL
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Laravel
- Symfony
- Slim
- Phalcon
- WordPress
- Drupal
- October CMS
- Headless / decoupled
- DDD
- Hexagonal
- Service + Repository
- Bounded contexts
- Queues · Horizon
- RabbitMQ
- Messenger
- Octane
- Eloquent
- Doctrine
- PostgreSQL · MySQL
- Redis · Elasticsearch
- Sanctum
- Passport · OAuth2
- Stripe · GoCardless
- Webhooks · SSE
- Pest
- PHPUnit
- Behat
- Larastan · PHPStan
PHP projects
we have shipped.
Three PHP projects from the portfolio, with the stack as stated on each case page.
SwipedOn
iPad receptionist app with a web admin for a New Zealand start-up. The back end is PHP Laravel with MySQL.
See case study → E-commerce · PHP and YiiAwnings
A European awnings retailer's portal rebuilt in pure PHP and the Yii framework, with a configurator for size, colour and fabric.
See case study → Real estate · PHPProperty Finder
Magora PHP developers worked alongside the in-house team of a UAE property portal on PHP and system architecture.
See case study → LaravelMore Laravel work
The Laravel projects we can name, how a build is priced, and how an existing application is audited and upgraded.
Laravel development company →What clients
say.
Verified reviews from our Clutch profile — 75+ verified client reviews.
“Broader than just the code itself, the team strived to understand the entire project.”
“They're accessible, and it doesn't feel like I'm working with a faceless team.”
“Their flexibility and ability to move through processes quickly were impressive.”
What to check before
you hire a PHP developer.
Whoever you hire, whether us, a freelancer or another agency, these six checks separate production PHP from code you will pay to rewrite.
- PHP 8.x, not 7.x habits
- Current Laravel / Symfony releases
- Typed properties and enums
- Composer, not copied vendor code
- PHPUnit or Pest
- Feature tests on the money paths
- CI runs them on every push
- Ask to see a real PR
- PHPStan or Psalm in CI
- A coding standard (PSR-12)
- Rector for upgrades
- No suppressed warnings
- OWASP Top 10 awareness
- composer audit on dependencies
- Secrets outside the repo
- UK GDPR data handling
- Code in your repository
- IP transfers to you on payment
- English-law contract
- NDA from day one
- README and setup scripts
- Deployment documented
- Your team can run it alone
- No lock-in to one engineer
The honest
questions.
At Magora a PHP developer is from £49/hour (about £390 a day), which comes to about £7,800 a month full-time over 20 working days. A full team with QA and product ownership is £65-£70/hour. The rate is set by seniority, not by language, and there is no recruitment fee.
The minimum engagement is four weeks. For a fixed-scope project we start with a Discovery from £3,000 and then quote a fixed price. See the UK software development pricing guide or 12 real UK project estimates.
Engagements run for a minimum of four weeks, then monthly rolling, full-time or part-time. You can add a developer for a release, step up before a launch or move to a maintenance retainer, month by month.
Unlike hiring a permanent developer, there is no recruitment fee and no candidate notice period to wait out. We will go through the contract terms with you on the call.
The team is managed from our London office and works to UK time, with agreed working hours that overlap with your team's day. Developers join your stand-ups, your tracker and your repository, and give a weekly demo.
We sign an NDA on day one. Developers commit to your repository as they write the code, and full ownership of the source code, designs and IP transfers to you on payment, under an English-law contract.
Magora is the trading name of Thinking Fish Ltd, Companies House 03637036, and has been delivering software from London since 2010.
Tell us straight away. We replace the developer at no extra cost, usually within a week. Replacement engineers come from Magora's own team, which includes architects and QA, and you meet them before they start.
Because the code is in your repository from the first commit, and documentation and code review are part of the work, knowledge does not leave with one engineer.
The first commit usually lands 2 to 5 working days after the offer. You meet the proposed engineers first and, if you want, see a free working prototype built in 5 to 10 working days before you sign anything.
For larger team builds (3 or more engineers) allow 5 to 10 working days of ramp-up. To discuss it, book a call.
Related: Laravel development company · hire Laravel developers · dedicated development team · IT staff augmentation · UK software development pricing guide
Artem leads an engineering team at Magora and reviews the technical content on this page: architecture, stack choices and delivery estimates.
Need senior PHP
engineers now?
A free 30-minute call with a senior engineer. Tell us your stack, scope and team, and we will say which developers we would put on the project, at what rate, and from which week.