What is Laravel Cloud?
Laravel Cloud is Laravel’s official fully managed PaaS. Everything from app deployment, scaling, databases, and caching to WebSocket infrastructure is integrated for Laravel. The Cloud Changelog records Launched Laravel Cloud! onFebruary 24, 2025. It’s a relatively new service that reached general availability in 2025.
How it differs from Forge
Laravel Cloud and Laravel Forge are both for Laravel developers, but operate at different layers.| Aspect | Laravel Cloud | Laravel Forge |
|---|---|---|
| Position | Fully managed PaaS | Server management tool |
| Primary operation | Choose environments and resources, then deploy | Provision and operate VPS / EC2, etc. |
| Infrastructure management | Minimal (managed by Cloud) | OS/middleware operation is your responsibility |
| Root access | None (no direct OS-level operations) | Yes (flexible control over servers) |
What Laravel Cloud excels at
Laravel Cloud’s strength is making it easy to enable the features you use in real-world Laravel operations from a dashboard-driven experience.Task Scheduler
With Scheduled Tasks, simply enable Scheduler on an App cluster or Worker cluster to haveschedule:run execute every minute.
Managed Queues
For Queues, Managed Queues are recommended. Laravel Cloud handles queue provisioning, worker startup, and scaling automatically. When there are no jobs, the worker count drops to zero, so you’re only billed while processing.| Option | Suitable use | Scaling | Billing model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Queues | Production, preview, and development in general. The first choice | Auto-scales based on queue backlog; scales down to zero when idle | Worker uptime seconds + queue operations |
| Worker cluster | You want to manage queue:work yourself, or run heavier background workloads | CPU/memory-based | Standard Worker cluster pricing |
| App cluster background processes | Small-scale development or low-frequency jobs | CPU/memory-based | Included in App cluster |
database or redis) yourself, use a Worker cluster. If the same compute as the app is sufficient, use the App cluster’s background processes.
Create a Managed Queue
Click New Managed Queue on the environment’s infrastructure canvas dashboard.
Choose the queue name and worker settings
Configure queue name, instance size, polling interval, maximum workers, and so on.
Scale to Zero (Flex compute)
Flex, described under Compute, is a low-cost, flexible compute class. The new Scale to Zero evolves this Flex compute from the older Hibernation model. On the new Flex compute, HTTP-request wake-ups have been reduced to under 500ms—no more waiting 5–20 seconds as before. To enable it, toggle Scale to Zero on in the App cluster settings, save, and redeploy. Furthermore, in environments with Scale to Zero enabled, the environment automatically wakes to run Scheduled Tasks and process queues even while asleep. Runningschedule:run on the App cluster while delegating job processing to Managed Queues is currently the most manageable combination, and matches what the official docs suggest.
Your own
queue:work on the App cluster may be interrupted across sleep timeouts. If you need reliable queue processing, follow the official docs and prioritize Managed Queues.Laravel Octane
Enabling Use Octane as runtime in Compute has Cloud run the app with the Octane + FrankenPHP setup. There’s no need to piece together server configuration by hand.Inertia SSR
You can enable Use Inertia SSR from Compute. When using a starter kit,npm run build:ssr is recommended.
WebSocket server (Reverb)
With Laravel Cloud WebSockets, you can create Reverb-based WebSocket clusters. Attaching one to an environment automatically injectsREVERB_* and VITE_REVERB_* variables.
Laravel Nightwatch integration
Environments offers a one-click integration, and the Cloud Changelog records One-Click Nightwatch Integration onJuly 1, 2025.
If you need to configure it manually, see nightwatch-on-cloud for instructions.
Pricing and free plan
Laravel Cloud pricing is essentially plan fee + usage-based billing. Always check Pricing for the details.- Starter:
$5/month. Includes$5of usage credit each month. New signups get the first month free - Growth:
$20/mo + usage, with$5of usage credit each month - Business:
$200/mo + usage, with$5of usage credit each month
Things to keep in mind in practice
You can’t rely on root-privileged operations
Because Cloud is a PaaS, it prioritizes operational simplicity over OS-level freedom. If you need work that assumes root privileges—kernel tuning, running custom daemons—consider options like Forge.Control Nightwatch event volume up front
When using Nightwatch on a free tier or small setup, event volume can grow quickly, so it’s safer to configure sampling from the start.Good fits and poor fits
Good fits
- You want to ship a Laravel app to production as fast as possible
- You want to run Scheduler / Queue / Octane / Inertia SSR / Reverb together
- You want to focus on app development and reduce server operations cost
Poor fits
- You want strong OS-level tuning with root privileges
- You have strong existing custom infrastructure needs (proprietary middleware, unusual network constraints)