Originally published at hafiz.dev

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Most developers make the infrastructure decision based on what they know, not what fits the project. They pick Laravel Cloud because it's new, or Forge because a senior dev on their team uses it, or a bare VPS because it looks cheap. None of those are reasons. They're starting points.

The right choice at 500 users is often the wrong one at 50,000. And the cost difference between these options isn't what most people expect. The invoice number is only part of it.

Here's what each option actually costs at three stages, using current May 2026 pricing. The goal isn't to declare a winner. It's to give you the real numbers so you can make the call that fits where you are right now.

What you're comparing

A quick clarification before the numbers, because people mix these up:

Laravel Cloud is a managed PaaS built by the Laravel team. You push your code and it handles servers, autoscaling, databases, SSL, queue workers, and deployments. You never SSH anywhere.

Laravel Forge is a server management layer. You still own the VPS and pay for it separately. Forge handles provisioning, Nginx config, deployments, SSL, and queue workers. You keep server-level control without doing the tedious parts manually.

A bare Hetzner VPS is just a server. You install PHP, configure Nginx, manage SSL renewals, set up queue workers, write deploy scripts. Everything is yours.

The numbers at each stage

Under 1,000 users

Side projects, early MVPs, apps you're not sure will stick.

At this stage the differences are real but small in absolute terms. Cloud's Starter tier is pay-as-you-go with no base fee. A small app with modest traffic runs $4-8/month. The Forge Hobby + Hetzner CX22 combo costs more upfront but gives you direct server access. A bare Hetzner CX22 at €4.49/month after the April 2026 price increase is still excellent value for 2 vCPUs and 4GB RAM.

Worth noting: Hetzner CX22 is roughly 3x cheaper than a comparable DigitalOcean droplet for equivalent specs. If you're choosing the VPS path, Hetzner is the obvious pick in Europe and increasingly popular for US projects too.

1,000 to 10,000 users

You've found traction. Deployment and uptime start mattering.

Cloud Growth at $20/month plus usage lands around $25-45/month depending on traffic patterns. Forge Growth at $19/month plus a mid-range Hetzner server is competitive at roughly $30/month total. The bare VPS is still cheapest in cash at $10/month, but the operational work starts adding up.

For a developer shipping features, the real question isn't "which is cheapest," it's this: how many hours a month am I spending on server maintenance versus building product? At 5,000 users, a misconfigured Nginx config or a failed deployment script starts costing you real time.

10,000 to 100,000 users

Infrastructure decisions affect your margins and your incident response.

At this scale, Cloud's autoscaling is the right call if your traffic is unpredictable. Traffic spikes that would take down a single Hetzner server get absorbed automatically. But that scaling costs money. Usage-based billing at this volume can push your monthly bill well above the base fee. Spend caps are announced for Cloud but not yet live as of this writing. The Laravel Cloud post covers what's coming on that front.

Forge at this scale means managing multiple servers, a load balancer, and probably a separate Redis instance. The Business plan at $39/month includes monitoring and automated database backups, which you need at 100k users. The Hetzner bill grows with your server count. Total lands at $80-120/month depending on architecture.

A bare VPS setup at this scale requires real infrastructure work, load balancers, Redis clusters, backup scripts, monitoring. It's the cheapest option but it's a part-time job.

What doesn't show up on the invoice

Your time. A bare VPS is cheap in cash but expensive in hours. Initial setup for someone who knows what they're doing is 3-5 hours. Ongoing maintenance is roughly 2 hours a month: security patches, PHP updates, debugging a failed deployment on a Friday evening. Multiply your hourly rate by that and the VPS isn't cheap anymore.

Forge cuts ongoing maintenance to near zero and initial setup to under an hour. Cloud cuts it entirely.

The deployment pipeline. Forge gives you zero-downtime deployments out of the box. On a bare VPS you configure that yourself. It's learnable. The CI/CD with GitHub Actions guide covers the setup, but it takes time you could spend shipping. Cloud handles it without any configuration.

Autoscaling anxiety vs bill anxiety. These are the two risks you're trading off. On a bare VPS or Forge, a traffic spike can take you down. On Cloud, a traffic spike drives up your bill. Neither is "safe," they're just different failure modes. Cloud's spend caps will help when they ship.

What I'd actually pick at each stage

Side project or early MVP: Bare Hetzner CX22 at €4.49/month. It's cheap enough to be disposable and the constraint forces you to understand what you actually need. When server maintenance starts interrupting feature work, that's the signal to move up.

Solo developer with a growing SaaS: Forge Growth + Hetzner CX32 at roughly $30/month total. You get the deployment automation, SSL, queue workers, and server monitoring without giving up control. It's where the best price-to-control ratio lives. Pair it with the VPS hardening guide to get the security layer sorted once and forget about it.

Small team building a product: Laravel Cloud Growth. When multiple developers are deploying, having one person own the servers creates a bottleneck. Cloud removes that entirely. Preview environments per PR are a real productivity win at this stage.

Agency managing client sites: Forge Business at $39/month. Unlimited servers, automated database backups, and server monitoring across all client projects. The per-client cost when split across 10 sites is negligible.

App with unpredictable traffic: Laravel Cloud. Product Hunt launches, viral moments, seasonal spikes. If your traffic can 10x overnight, you want autoscaling and you don't want to be the one managing it at midnight. The full SaaS architecture guide covers how to structure the app layer to take full advantage of Cloud's scaling.

FAQ

Can I switch from Forge or a bare VPS to Laravel Cloud later?

Yes. It's a deployment change, not a code change. Your Laravel app runs identically on both. The migration is mainly about moving your database and updating your deployment pipeline. Most teams do it in a day.

What's the real total cost of Forge?

Forge Growth is $19/month plus your VPS. A Hetzner CX22 at €4.49/month brings the total to roughly $24-25/month. That's competitive with Cloud's Starter tier but with unlimited servers and flat-rate billing, so no usage surprises.

Does Laravel Cloud handle queue workers and cron jobs?

Yes. Queue workers and cron jobs are first-class features on Growth and above. It's one of the things that makes Cloud well-suited for SaaS, where background processing is usually essential.

What about Laravel Vapor?

Vapor runs on AWS Lambda at $39/month plus AWS usage. It's the right choice for workloads with extreme traffic variability or teams deep in the AWS ecosystem. For most Laravel developers, Cloud or Forge fits better.

Is the $5/month plan for Laravel Cloud available yet?

Not as of this writing. The Laravel team announced it as coming soon in May 2026. The current entry point is the Starter tier with no base fee and pay-as-you-go usage, which runs $4-8/month for a small app.

The honest version

The developers who regret their infrastructure choice usually overbuilt early or held on to a cheap setup for too long. A €4.49 Hetzner server handles your first 10,000 users fine if it's set up correctly. Cloud makes sense when your traffic becomes unpredictable or when server maintenance is competing with feature work. Forge sits in the middle and is the right answer for more situations than it gets credit for.

Start with the cheapest option that doesn't slow you down. Upgrade when the friction becomes real, not before.

Got a side project or SaaS and want a second opinion on the infrastructure setup? Get in touch.