We use a lot of packages inside Laravel. For free. But do we know the PEOPLE who created them and support us? Let’s recognize their names and faces (photos taken from their Twitter accounts) and give the respect they deserve. Here’s the list of the most “famous” creators with their packages, maybe you will find out some new packages for yourself.

1. Freek van der Herten (and Spatie team)

No doubt they are leaders in terms of volume – around 100 packages with millions of downloads combined.

Most famous packages:

You probably all know Freek as their leader, but let’s give a round of applause to other team members:

Sebastian de Deyne

Alex Vanderbist

You can support their work via Patreon campaign or just sending them a postcard.

Also, follow Freek or Spatie on Twitter.

2. Barry van den Heuvel

Do you use Laravel Debugbar? (if not, r u mad?!) Yes, that is the author. In addition, he created a dozen more packages with tens of millions downloads combined (not kidding), the most popular ones are:

Barry is not really active on Twitter, but you can still follow him there.

3. Jens Segers

One of the earliest contributors to Laravel packages community, has three packages with over million downloads each, with a dozen less popular ones.

Follow Jens on Twitter here.

4. Marcel Pociot

This guy is also really active, recently with his Botman movement and chatbot hype, but historically he has created quite a few Laravel packages:

Follow Marcel on Twitter or watch his course Build A Chatbot.

5. Nuno Maduro

You can call him a “console guy”, and a Laravel newcomer with his Collision package, which was officially included in core Laravel 5.6. But it’s not the only thing he released, here’s the list:

You can follow Nuno’s journey on Twitter here.

So these are my personal TOP 5, but you can also check out these active Laravel community creators with their packages:

Finally, I recommend reading an article by the same Maatwebsite mentioned the last in the list, about the reality of maintaining the popular package: Laravel Excel — Lessons Learned

Creating and supporting a package is pretty hard – especially doing it for free. So I guess we should thank all of these guys for their hard work for the Laravel community!

Anyone I didn’t mention? Please add to the comments.