Laravel Cloud vs. Self-Hosting on VPS

Laravel Cloud is a fully-managed platform built by the Laravel team for Laravel applications. It automates the entire infrastructure stack (servers, databases, cache, scaling, SSL, etc.). Self-hosting means you provision and run your own server(s) or VPS. With self-hosting, you're responsible for all setup: installing PHP/MySQL, configuring Nginx, setting up queue workers, backups, and more. In short, Laravel Cloud automates and simplifies everything, while self-hosting gives you full control but requires manual management.

Yes. Laravel Cloud runs on optimized infrastructure with fast networking and autoscaling. It is designed to handle high loads efficiently. A well-configured VPS can be fast, but self-hosted performance depends on your instance size and configuration. Under heavy load, Laravel Cloud can instantly add replicas, whereas a fixed-size VPS may slow down. Also, Laravel Cloud's edge network and caching (via Cloudflare) can improve global response times.

Completely. With Laravel Cloud, no server setup or maintenance is needed. The platform provisions servers, applies security patches, scales resources, and handles networking for you. On a self-hosted server, you must manage the OS, PHP updates, web server settings, security patches, and troubleshooting.

Not out of the box. Self-hosting generally requires manually upgrading a server or adding more servers when more capacity is needed. You could implement autoscaling groups on AWS or similar, but that takes significant DevOps work. Laravel Cloud has built-in autoscaling: you simply set a max replica count, and the platform scales automatically.

It depends on usage patterns. On Cloud's Starter plan, you don't pay a subscription fee, only for actual usage. Other plans have subscription costs, but they all benefit from auto-hibernation and pay-as-you-go pricing, meaning you only pay when your app is actively serving requests.

Laravel Cloud is purpose-built for Laravel, providing the most seamless experience. It supports Laravel queues, schedules, and Eloquent by default, and integrates with Laravel's ecosystem tools. With self-hosting, you can run Laravel, but you'll need to configure services yourself (install Redis, scheduler, etc.). If you prefer to focus on writing Laravel code and want Laravel-native tooling, Laravel Cloud is better. If you need to run multiple types of services or have an existing server workflow, self-hosting might fit your workflow.

Yes. Laravel Cloud offers fully managed MySQL and Postgres databases and Redis-compatible key-value stores that you can provision in seconds. These are integrated and automatically backed up. With self-hosting, you must install and run your own database servers and cache (or use a managed database service), and handle backups and updates yourself.

Laravel Cloud makes Git deployment trivial: just connect your GitHub/GitLab repo and deploy. It's one step. No additional setup is required on Laravel Cloud for Git. With self-hosting, you need to configure a deployment workflow. You might set up Git hooks, a CI/CD pipeline, or use tools like Laravel Envoy or Forge. This takes time and can be error-prone if not automated.

Yes. Every new organization gets $5 in free usage credits, and your first month on the Starter plan is free. Credits top up automatically each month, and you only ever pay for usage beyond them. Your apps and databases scale to zero when idle, so you're never charged for compute time while they're not in use. View detailed pricing here.