Laravel Query Builder vs Eloquent: What's the Difference?

Deciding between Laravel Query Builder and Eloquent ORM? Compare performance, syntax, and architectural trade offs to optimize your database queries.

Laravel gives you two ways to talk to your database: the Query Builder and Eloquent ORM . Beginners often wonder which one to use. This article compares them side by side so you can choose confidently. What is the Query Builder? The Query Builder is a fluent interface for building SQL queries using PHP methods. It works directly with tables and returns plain objects ( stdClass ), not models. use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB; $products = DB::table('products') >where('price', '>', 100) >orderBy('name') >get(); What is Eloquent? Eloquent maps each table to a Model class. Results come back as model instances with built in features like relationships, accessors, and events. $products = Product::where('price', '>', 100) >orderBy('name') >get(); Notice that the syntax is almost identical. The difference is what happens behind the scenes. Side by Side Examples Task Query...

Home · Projects · Articles · Developer tools · Contact