PHP 8.1 end of life
Active support ended November 2023. Security support ended December 2025. Since then PHP 8.1 receives nothing, not even fixes for published vulnerabilities.
| PHP | Active support until | Security fixes until |
|---|---|---|
| 8.1 | 2023-11 | 2025-12 |
| 8.2 | 2024-12 | 2026-12 |
| 8.3 | 2025-12 | 2027-12 |
| 8.4 | 2026-12 | 2028-12 |
| 8.5 | 2027-12 | 2029-12 |
Why applications are still on 8.1
PHP 8.1 is the minimum for Symfony 6.4, so many 6.4 upgrades stopped there. It is also the last version that tolerates a lot of legacy code without deprecation warnings: dynamic properties, passing null to internal functions, and old Doctrine annotations all became noisy in 8.2 and 8.3. That noise is why the PHP bump gets postponed, not the PHP version itself.
What breaks when you move
- 8.2: dynamic properties are deprecated. Entities and DTOs that set undeclared properties need
#[AllowDynamicProperties]or, better, declared properties. - 8.3: stricter typed class constants and readonly handling; mostly quiet for application code.
- 8.4: implicit nullable parameter types are deprecated (
Type $x = nullmust become?Type $x = null). Rector fixes this in one run. - Dependencies: old majors of bundles and libraries often cap PHP at
<8.2. This, not your own code, is usually the real blocker, and it is what the scan shows.
The path
Target PHP 8.3 (security fixes until December 2027) or 8.4 (December 2028). Symfony 6.4 runs on both, so the PHP jump does not require a framework upgrade. It does require every dependency to allow the new version. As a fixed-price add-on the PHP jump is €500 to €1,500 depending on how many dependencies need a major bump. See services and prices.
Where does your application stand?
Upload your composer.lock and get your upgrade path, the packages that block it, and a readiness score in seconds. Free, no account, no source code.
Dates verified 2026-09-09 against the official release pages. Other deadlines: PHP 8.2 end of life · Symfony 6.4 end of life · Doctrine ORM 2 end of life · all end-of-life dates. Also available in Deutsch Nederlands