Laravel Forge pricing in 2026: what it really costs

TL;DR: Laravel Forge costs a flat $12 (Hobby), $19 (Growth) or $39 (Business) a month, and the server is extra. A small Laravel app with MySQL and Redis on one 4 GB server costs about $19 a month in total with a Hetzner server in Europe, or $36 to $37 with DigitalOcean or Forge's own Laravel VPS.

• Pick Forge Hobby ($12) if you run one server, or any number of Laravel VPS servers, and don't need Forge to back up your database.
• Pick Forge Growth ($19) if you run two or more servers from Hetzner, DigitalOcean or another provider.
• Pick Forge Business ($39) if you want Forge to back up your databases, monitor your servers or give teammates their own access. That takes the same small app to $46 to $63.
• Pick Laravel Cloud if your app sleeps most of the day, because it bills compute only while awake. See Laravel Cloud pricing.
• Pick your own server with Ployz, which I build, if you want Forge's server bill without Forge's fee, and you can live without teams for now.

Source: Forge pricing, checked 2026-10-08. Every plan has unlimited sites and deployments, zero-downtime deploys and SSL.

Laravel Forge is a server management service from the Laravel team: it sets up servers, installs PHP, Nginx and your database, and deploys your app from Git. It doesn't host anything itself. Every app runs on a server you pay for, either from a cloud provider you connect or from Laravel VPS, which Forge sells by the hour.

What would your Laravel app cost with Forge?

Pick the closest app, then customize it. Each row is the whole monthly bill: the Forge fee plus the servers, or Laravel Cloud's usage bill, or the server alone with Ployz.

The calculator picks the smallest server that fits your app, its queue worker, MySQL, Redis and 0.5 GB for the system. It also picks the cheapest Forge plan that allows that many servers. Switch "Forge features you need" to Business to see the cost of backups and monitoring. It assumes monthly Forge billing; annual billing takes $2 to $6 a month off.

What each Laravel Forge plan includes

Laravel calls the pricing flat-rate: "You only pay for your Forge subscription and whatever your cloud provider charges" (Forge pricing). Every plan also includes health checks, heartbeats and free on-forge.com addresses. Standard support on Growth aims to answer within 24 hours, and advanced support on Business within 8, both on business days.

The Hobby limit is the one people miss. An "external server" is any server that isn't Laravel VPS, so a second Hetzner or DigitalOcean server moves you to Growth at $19.

Three features sit on Business alone, and they're the ones a production app usually wants:

• Database backups. The docs say backups are "only available on the Business plan", and you bring your own storage, such as S3 (database backups).
• Server monitoring. The docs say monitoring is "only available on the Business plan" (monitoring), and the pricing page marks it Business only too.
• Team members. Inviting people into an organization and giving them roles needs Business (organizations).

Billing is per organization, and each organization needs its own subscription. An agency that keeps one organization per client pays the fee once per client. Upgrades are charged pro rata straight away, and downgrades take effect at the end of the billing period.

What Laravel VPS costs

Laravel VPS is Forge's own server, created in seconds from the Forge dashboard. It runs on DigitalOcean, is billed in 1-hour blocks and includes bandwidth "subject to fair usage" (Laravel VPS). The price depends on your Forge plan.

Sources: Laravel VPS prices (the table on the Laravel VPS docs page) and DigitalOcean Droplets, shared CPU.

On Hobby, Laravel VPS costs a little more than the same Droplet bought from DigitalOcean. The CPU, memory and disk are the same. What you pay for is one bill and a server that's ready in seconds, which is also how Hobby gets unlimited servers.

Laravel VPS blocks outgoing mail ports 25, 465 and 587 by default. The docs suggest sending email through an HTTP API service such as Resend, or asking Forge support to unblock the ports.

Forge also sells managed MySQL and PostgreSQL, run on DigitalOcean. The smallest cluster (1 vCPU, 1 GB, 10 GB) costs $17 a month on Hobby, $16 on Growth and $14 on Business (managed databases, prices). Daily backups and 7 days of point-in-time recovery are included, so it's the way to get backups without Business. Only Laravel VPS servers reach it over the private network; other servers need public access turned on.

What do three real Laravel apps cost with Forge?

I used the same three apps as in my Laravel Cloud pricing article:

• Small: a 1 GB app running its own queue worker, 1 GB MySQL with 10 GB of data, Redis, 50 GB of traffic. It needs about 2.75 GB of RAM, so one 4 GB server.
• Medium: a 4 GB app, a 1 GB queue worker, 4 GB MySQL with 25 GB, Redis, 300 GB of traffic. About 10.5 GB of RAM, so one 16 GB server.
• Large: a 16 GB app, a 4 GB queue worker, 8 GB MySQL with 100 GB, Redis, 1 TB of traffic. About 31 GB of RAM, so two 16 GB servers.

Hetzner prices include $0.60 for the IPv4 address. The Laravel Cloud bill assumes the app runs all month, and is broken down line by line in the Laravel Cloud article.

For the small app, the Forge fee is most of the bill. On Hetzner, $12 of the $19 is Forge, which is 63%. For the large app it's $19 of $57, and the servers are what grow.

The provider matters more than the plan. The same medium app costs $31 with Forge on Hetzner and $108 on DigitalOcean, because a 16 GB CX43 costs $19.09 and a 16 GB Droplet costs $96. The catch is that Hetzner's CX servers are only in Germany and Finland. For US users, DigitalOcean or Laravel VPS is the usual pick, and Hetzner's US servers now cost more than DigitalOcean at every size.

What changes the Forge bill

• A second server. On Hobby, a second server outside Laravel VPS means Growth, $7 more a month. Laravel VPS servers don't count against the limit.
• Backups, monitoring or a teammate. Any one of them means Business, $27 more than Hobby. A Forge managed database ($17 and up) or DigitalOcean's own Droplet backups (20% of the Droplet price for weekly, 30% for daily, per the Droplet pricing page) are the cheaper routes to backups.
• Annual billing. Paying yearly saves $24 on Hobby, $29 on Growth and $69 on Business.
• More organizations. Each one is its own subscription.
• Laravel VPS on Business. The 15% discount can make Business cheaper than Hobby once you run about $180 of Laravel VPS servers a month.
• The server itself. This is the line that grows. Compare providers in cheapest VPS, and DigitalOcean's full price list in DigitalOcean pricing.

Server prices to pair with Forge

Forge connects to Laravel VPS, DigitalOcean, Akamai (Linode), Vultr, AWS and Hetzner Cloud, or to any server you add yourself as a custom VPS (server providers).

Hetzner raised cloud prices twice in 2026, on 1 April and 15 June, so older Forge guides that quote a $5 Hetzner server are out of date.

Forge, Laravel Cloud or your own server with Ployz?

Pick Forge if you want a PHP server the classic way, with SSH access, Nginx config you can edit and Laravel's tooling on top. It's the cheapest managed route to a production Laravel app, and the fee stays flat as you grow.

Pick Laravel Cloud if your app is idle most of the day or you want no server at all. My first Laravel Cloud bill was about $600 for a month, because every piece of an app that's always busy is billed separately. My medium app costs $31 with Forge on one Hetzner server, against $144 on Laravel Cloud.

Pick your own server with Ployz if you want Forge's server costs without the fee, or containers across more than one server.

Where Ployz fits

Ployz deploys apps from GitHub to servers you rent, and it's free on your own servers, custom domains included. It builds PHP apps without a Dockerfile, so a Laravel app doesn't need one.

ployz up --server root@your-server

That installs Ployz on the server over SSH, uploads the current directory, builds it and gives it an HTTPS address. Connect the GitHub repo and every push deploys, with a preview environment for each pull request.

• Push-to-deploy from GitHub, PHP built without a Dockerfile.
• Zero-downtime deploys when a health check is set.
• A pre-deploy command for php artisan migrate.
• One-click MySQL and Redis next to your app. Ployz keeps a mirror of the database on another of your servers and syncs it when you ask.
• The scheduler as its own service running php artisan schedule:work.
• Queue workers as their own service, up to 50 replicas across servers on WireGuard.

Next to Forge Hobby on a Hetzner CX23, Ployz saves the $12 fee and adds preview environments. Next to Forge Business, you give up Forge's scheduled backups, server monitoring and teams, so I'd stay on Forge if you rely on those today.

FAQ

Is Laravel Forge free?

No, Forge has no free plan. The cheapest plan is Hobby at $12 a month, or $120 a year, and the pricing page mentions no free trial. You also pay for the server.

Does Laravel Forge include hosting?

No, Forge doesn't include a server. You connect a provider such as Hetzner or DigitalOcean, or buy Laravel VPS through Forge, and pay for it on top of the plan. A 4 GB server costs from $7 at Hetzner to $25 as Laravel VPS on Hobby.

Is Laravel Forge worth it?

For one or two servers, yes, if you'd otherwise set up Nginx, PHP and deploys by hand. The fee is $12 to $19 for most people and stays flat however many sites you run. It's harder to justify when the fee is bigger than the server, as with a $7 Hetzner CX23, and you don't need what Forge adds.

Is Laravel Forge cheaper than Laravel Cloud?

Yes, for an app that runs all day. My medium app costs $31 with Forge on Hetzner, $108 with Forge on DigitalOcean and $144 on Laravel Cloud. For an app that sleeps most of the day, Laravel Cloud can cost about $10 a month.

Do I still need Envoyer with Forge?

No, not for one server. New Forge subscriptions include zero-downtime deploys for a single server, and Laravel says an extra Envoyer subscription "is not necessary with Forge" (Forge pricing).

Does Laravel Forge back up my database?

Only on the Business plan, at $39 a month. The backups go to storage you provide, such as S3. On lower plans, a Forge managed database from $17 a month includes daily backups.

Is Laravel VPS cheaper than DigitalOcean?

Not on Hobby. Laravel VPS costs up to $4 more than the same Droplet on Hobby, the same or $1 less on Growth, and 8% to 17% less on Business.

How I checked

I checked every price on 2026-10-08 on Forge's pricing page and docs, Laravel VPS's price list, Laravel Cloud's pricing page and docs, DigitalOcean's Droplet page, Hetzner's 15 June 2026 price list and Netcup's VPS page, linked next to each number. I read the annual Forge prices from the pricing page with "Annual" selected. The three apps are my assumptions, sized the same way as in my Laravel Cloud article, and the totals come from the calculator on this page. I didn't benchmark the servers or test Forge's support response times. I build Ployz, which is one of the options compared here.

Deploy your Laravel app to your own server with Ployz, free.