Reasons to choose Laravel Cloud
Full-stack scale-to-zero. Since Laracon US 2026, a dormant app scales the whole stack to zero — including MySQL — and wakes in under 500 ms. A fleet of sleeping side projects makes per-VPS economics impractical, and Cloud is built for exactly that shape. strackt has no scale-to-zero: your VPS is always on.
More runtimes, and monorepo frontends. Cloud runs PHP, Node.js, Bun, Deno, Go, Python and Ruby, and deploys a Next.js or Nuxt frontend alongside a Laravel API from one repository. strackt covers Laravel, plus WordPress, plain PHP, Symfony, Node.js, Next.js and Nuxt in beta. A Laravel API and a Next.js or Nuxt frontend can deploy from one repository as two applications (beta), each with its own lockfile, but we don't link them for you.
Org tooling and compliance. An org-level, client-side-encrypted secrets manager and a private-cloud tier. We have neither.
Side by side
Comparison recorded October 2026. Check the linked official pages for current plans and availability.
| Compared | Laravel Cloud | strackt |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | Platform — push and it works |
Platform — push and it works |
| Infrastructure | Theirs — dedicated AWS EC2, operated by Laravel |
Yours (any VPS, any provider) |
| Pricing model | Plan fee (Starter $5, Growth $20, Business $200, Enterprise custom) plus usage — compute per second, bandwidth past the allowance, databases and storage — with $5 monthly credits (live) |
€5/app/month excl. VAT after the first free app, plus your provider bill |
| Server access | No SSH access documented |
Full SSH |
| Disaster recovery | Daily MySQL backups (docs); point-in-time recovery for Postgres (docs) |
Code and configuration rollback; available backups recover data |
| Edge / CDN | Cloudflare CDN bundled — cache + DDoS + WAF at hundreds of edge locations |
Bring your own Cloudflare (or any CDN) in front of your VPS |
| App compute regions | 9 AWS regions to choose from across the US East, Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific (pricing) |
Any region you can provision a VPS in — each application runs in the region of the server you place it on, and one server can host several |
| Stack support today | PHP, Node.js, Bun, Deno, Go, Python and Ruby runtimes (docs) — broader than strackt |
Laravel, plus WordPress, plain PHP, Symfony, Node.js, Next.js and Nuxt in beta |
| Preview environments | All plans; unlimited from Growth (docs) |
One per pull request, on GitHub |
| Team behind it | Laravel team — full support capacity, framework-team backing |
Solo founder project — async ticketing only, smaller capacity |
| Exit strategy | Migrate everything off |
Your server keeps running |
Laravel Cloud regions
Where your app can run
Laravel Cloud runs applications in nine AWS regions: two in the US East, one in Canada, three in Europe and three in Asia Pacific (pricing, as of 3 October 2026). That covers most of North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific hubs. There is no US West, South America, Africa, Middle East or India region yet, and Cloud recommends keeping an external database in the same AWS region as your app.
On strackt, the region is wherever you rent the server: any data centre your VPS provider offers. Your database can run on the same server, next to the app.
- US East
- Virginia, Ohio
- Canada
- Central
- Europe
- Frankfurt, Ireland, London
- Asia Pacific
- Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney
- strackt
- Any region your VPS provider offers
Region list from the Laravel Cloud pricing page and its FAQ, re-verified 3 October 2026.
What changes the bill
Usage-based cloud costs depend on the workload. strackt charges per application; your provider bills the VPS and any usage separately. These examples show the assumptions behind the comparison.
- strackt
- €5 per app, excl. VAT
- Your VPS
- €5.49 and up, paid to your provider
- Laravel Cloud
- $5 Starter plan, then usage
Every figure excludes VAT and sales tax. Hetzner CX23 (€5.49, Germany or Finland, excluding IPv4) is the cheapest VPS that runs a strackt application; Hetzner raised cloud prices on 15 June 2026 and retired the CX22 this page previously used. Laravel Cloud plans start at $5 (Starter) with $5 of monthly usage credits, then bill compute per second, bandwidth past the allowance ($0.10/GB), databases, Valkey and object storage on top; a spending limit pauses compute when reached. So there is no monthly figure to quote against ours — the ranges this page used to show were estimates, not list prices, and have been removed. Re-verified 3 October 2026; prices unchanged.
Before moving an application
Plan replacements for the managed services your app uses. Provision a VPS, deploy the repository, migrate data and verify the application before switching DNS. Cutover is in your hands; we cannot promise zero downtime during migration.
Is the developer experience really the same?
Both support a push-to-deploy workflow. They are not feature-for-feature equivalents: check the Features page for the supported stacks, previews and controls in strackt.
What happens to my server if I leave strackt?
Detach the server through a verified handover: strackt activates a standalone configuration and checks the services before releasing management. You keep the server, provider account and running applications.
Is strackt cheaper because it's worse?
The billing model is different. strackt charges per application and you pay your provider separately. Whether it costs less depends on your workload, server and the services you need.
Does strackt have edge / CDN like Laravel Cloud?
A CDN is not bundled. You can put Cloudflare or another CDN in front of your VPS. Each application runs in the region of its server; strackt does not provide multi-region failover.
Who's behind strackt, and what's your support capacity?
strackt is built by Jan Peter, a solo developer. Support is async and hands-on while capacity allows; there is no published SLA during beta. If guaranteed response times are essential, weigh that limit when choosing a provider.