Browse our curated list of Website Development Companies
To hire Laravel developers, start with what you need built: a new web app on Laravel 13, an upgrade of an older Laravel app, or fixes to a live system someone else wrote. Then screen for modern PHP, Eloquent and SQL, queues, testing with Pest or PHPUnit, and safe deployment. Run a short paid test task, keep the code in your own repository and start with a two-week trial. Indian partner companies commonly bill $18 to $45 an hour for Laravel work, while US government contract ceiling rates for web developers have a median of $121 an hour.
This guide is for buyers in any country who want to hire Laravel developers, mostly from India: founders, product owners and IT managers. It covers sourced rates, the version dates many buyers miss, the skills that matter in 2026, a screening process, 12 interview questions with good and weak answers, red flags and two cost examples.
Key takeaways
- Laravel gives each major version 18 months of bug fixes and two years of security fixes. Laravel 11 lost security support in March 2026, and Laravel 12 gets security fixes only until 24 February 2027.
- PHP 8.2 loses security support on 31 December 2026. New Laravel work in 2026 should run on PHP 8.4 or 8.5.
- US federal contract ceiling rates for web developers have a median of $121 an hour across 1,420 rates in GSA CALC. The few PHP developer rates listed have a median of $92.
- Indian partner companies commonly charge $18 to $45 an hour for Laravel, with project management and testing often included.
- A paid test task of four to eight hours, reviewed with the developer, tells you more than any interview.
How to Hire Laravel Developers: The Short Version
- Write a one-page brief. Say what the app does, the current Laravel and PHP versions, the database, where it's hosted and what must change.
- Pick a hiring model. A freelancer, a dedicated developer from a partner company, or a full project team.
- Shortlist three to five companies. Check registration, and ask for two Laravel apps they built or upgraded plus a code sample.
- Screen in three steps. A 30-minute call, a paid test task and a review call.
- Start with a two-week trial. Code goes into your repository, and servers and the domain stay in your accounts.
Laravel and PHP Versions: The Dates to Check Before You Hire
Laravel ships one major version a year, around the first quarter. Each version gets 18 months of bug fixes and two years of security fixes[1]. PHP has its own support calendar[2], and both must be current for an app to receive security fixes.
| Version | Security fixes until | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Laravel 13, PHP 8.3 to 8.5 | Q1 2028 | Use for new projects |
| Laravel 12, PHP 8.2 to 8.5 | 24 February 2027 | Plan the upgrade to 13 now |
| Laravel 11 | Ended 12 March 2026 | Upgrade soon |
| Laravel 10 and older | Ended | Upgrade urgently |
| PHP 8.2 | 31 December 2026 | Move to PHP 8.4 or 8.5 |
| PHP 8.4 | 31 December 2028 | Good choice today |
| PHP 8.5 | 31 December 2029 | Good choice today |
After the end date, no security fixes arrive. The app keeps running, but every new hole stays open. The Laravel team says it aims to make each major upgrade possible in a day or less, and for a clean app with tests that's often true. Apps on Laravel 5 to 8, or on PHP 7, are a different job. The gap is several major versions, packages may no longer exist, and the work is closer to a partial rebuild.
Ask every candidate which versions your app runs and what they would do first. A developer who doesn't ask is a warning sign.
Laravel Developer Rates in 2026
Most Laravel rate pages are written by firms selling developers, and their numbers disagree widely. We used checkable sources instead.
The US government's CALC tool lists the maximum hourly rates contractors may charge federal buyers under GSA schedules[3]. On 6 November 2026 we pulled every web developer rate. Laravel itself barely appears there, so the web developer figures are the fairer US benchmark.
| Role in GSA CALC | Rates found | Median ceiling rate |
|---|---|---|
| Web developer, 0 to 4 years | 728 | $109 an hour |
| Web developer, 5 to 9 years | 552 | $131 an hour |
| Web developer, 10 years or more | 140 | $159 an hour |
| All web developer rates, 510 contractors | 1,420 | $121 an hour |
| PHP developer titles, 8 contractors | 13 | $92 an hour |
These are ceiling rates for US government buyers, so private US projects often pay less. On pay, the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey reports a median salary for full-stack developers in India of about $13,950 a year, against about $138,000 in the US[4]. In US private industry, wages are about 70% of an employee's total cost, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics[5].
Indian partner companies usually bill:
| Level | What they can do | Typical Indian partner rate |
|---|---|---|
| Junior, 1 to 2 years | Build pages, forms and simple APIs from a clear spec | $18 to $25 an hour |
| Mid-level, 3 to 5 years | Own features, write Eloquent queries, jobs and tests | $25 to $35 an hour |
| Senior, 6 years or more | Design the app, lead upgrades, review code | $35 to $45 an hour |
| Architect | Plan large upgrades, scaling and team structure | $45 to $60 an hour |
These ranges come from the proposals we see on UpBusiness and match our software development cost benchmark. A full-time dedicated Laravel developer from an Indian partner company usually costs $3,000 to $7,000 a month.
Freelancer, Partner Company or Your Own Team?
| Freelancer | Partner company | Your own team in India | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed to start | Days | One to three weeks | Three to six months |
| Who reviews the code | You | A senior on their team | Your tech lead |
| Front end, server, testing | Usually one person | Often in one team | Separate hires |
| If someone leaves | You start again | The company replaces them | You hire again |
| Best for | Small, clear tasks | A product, upgrade or project | A long-term team of ten or more |
Laravel has a large freelance market, and many small jobs go well with a good freelancer. For an app your business runs on every day, a partner company is usually safer, because a senior reviews each change and the company covers holidays and staff changes. If you need people working only for you for a year or more, read our comparison of dedicated developers and project-based teams, and our guide to agency vs freelancer vs in-house for the full cost of each model.
Skills to Look For in a Laravel Developer in 2026
- Modern PHP. Types, enums, readonly properties and attributes. Ask which PHP version they use day to day. If the answer is 7.4, keep looking.
- Eloquent and SQL. Relationships, eager loading to avoid the N+1 problem, indexes and migrations. Most Laravel apps use MySQL or PostgreSQL.
- Queues and jobs. Sending email, processing files and calling other systems in the background with queues, Horizon and scheduled tasks.
- APIs and sign-in. API resources, Sanctum or Passport for tokens, policies and gates for permissions.
- Front end. Blade with Livewire, or Inertia with Vue or React. Ask which one your app uses and whether they have shipped it.
- Testing. Feature tests with Pest or PHPUnit, database factories and tests in the build pipeline.
- Upgrades. Moving across major versions, replacing abandoned packages and using tools such as Rector or Laravel Shift.
- Deployment. Forge, Vapor, Laravel Cloud or plain servers with Docker, zero-downtime releases and backups.
Some projects need more: Filament or Nova for admin panels, Cashier for subscriptions, or Octane for very busy apps. Ask for these by name if you need them.
Why Buyers Hire Laravel Developers in India
PHP runs a large share of the web, and India has trained PHP developers for two decades. Laravel became the default PHP framework for many Indian web companies, so the talent pool is deep at every level. For buyers, that means:
- Cost. Indian partner rates are usually a quarter to a third of US or UK rates for the same experience.
- Experience with older apps. Many developers have maintained Laravel 5 to 8 apps for years and know how to upgrade them without breaking business rules.
- Full teams. A company can add a designer, a front end developer and a tester within weeks.
The common problems are the time gap, uneven quality and staff turnover. A paid test task deals with quality. Write the working hours and the named people into the contract to deal with the rest. If you're hiring from the US, our guide for US buyers covers time overlap, contracts and payments.
How to Screen Laravel Developers in Three Steps
Step 1: a 30-minute call. Ask about the last two Laravel apps they worked on. Which versions? What did they change, and what went wrong? Strong developers talk about data, users and speed. Weak ones list packages.
Step 2: a paid test task, four to eight hours. A small Laravel 13 API with two resources, validation, Sanctum sign-in, one queued job and feature tests. Ask for a short README on how to run it.
Step 3: a review call. Ask them to explain the structure. How would they find a slow page? How would they upgrade this to the next major version? What would they add with another day?
If you aren't technical, pay an independent senior Laravel developer for an hour to review the task. On a hire worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, that hour is cheap insurance.
12 Interview Questions for Laravel Developers, With Good and Weak Answers
| Question | A good answer mentions | A weak answer |
|---|---|---|
| What is the N+1 problem and how do you fix it? | One query per row in a loop; fix with eager loading using with(), and spot it with Debugbar or Telescope | Add more server memory |
| When would you use a queue? | Slow or unreliable work such as email, files and third-party calls, with retries and failed job handling | Never needed one |
| How do you protect a form from mass assignment? | fillable or guarded on the model, validated data only, Form Requests | Laravel does it all |
| How do you handle permissions? | Policies and gates, checked in controllers and views, tested | Check the role in each page |
| How do you store secrets? | Environment variables, never in the repository, separate values per environment | In the config file |
| How would you build an API for a mobile app? | API resources, Sanctum tokens, versioning, rate limits, consistent errors | Return the model as JSON |
| How do you test a Laravel feature? | Feature tests with Pest or PHPUnit, factories, a test database, run in CI | Test it by hand |
| How would you upgrade Laravel 10 to 13? | One major version at a time, upgrade guides, package checks, tests, Shift or Rector | Change the version number |
| How do you find a slow page? | Query logs, Telescope, indexes, caching and moving work to queues | Restart the server |
| Livewire or Inertia: when would you choose each? | Livewire for server-driven pages in PHP, Inertia when the team wants Vue or React | Whatever the last project used |
| How do you deploy without downtime? | Zero-downtime releases, migrations planned to be safe, health checks, rollback | Upload files over FTP |
| Tell me about a production issue you fixed. | What broke, how they found it, the fix and what changed after | Never had one |
For questions to ask the company rather than the developer, use our list of questions to ask a software development company.
Red Flags When Hiring Laravel Developers
- They plan new work on Laravel 11 or PHP 8.2, both out of support or close to it.
- Passwords or API keys sit in their sample code.
- No tests and no example of a finished major-version upgrade.
- Admin panels built by copying a paid theme with no licence.
- They want the code, server or domain in their own accounts.
- The company sends a senior to the interview and a junior to do the work.
- A quote far below the ranges above with no clear reason.
What a Laravel Project Costs: Two Worked Examples
Example 1: a new web app. A booking platform on Laravel 13 with customer sign-in, an admin panel, payments, email through queues and about 25 screens. A partner company estimates about 700 hours.
| Phase | Hours | Indian partner at $30 an hour | US at the $121 web developer median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery, design and database | 90 | $2,700 | $10,890 |
| Features, admin panel and payments | 420 | $12,600 | $50,820 |
| Testing and security | 120 | $3,600 | $14,520 |
| Hosting setup, launch and handover | 70 | $2,100 | $8,470 |
| Total | 700 | $21,000 | $84,700 |
Example 2: an upgrade. Moving a clean, tested app from Laravel 12 to 13 often takes 8 to 40 hours, or about $240 to $1,200. Moving an app from Laravel 6 on PHP 7.4 to Laravel 13 can take 150 to 600 hours, because each major version brings changes and some packages must be replaced. Ask for a paid assessment of a few days before any company quotes a full upgrade.
The US column uses the GSA CALC median ceiling rate, so a private US agency may charge less. Hosting comes on top. A small Laravel app on a managed server often costs $20 to $150 a month. For website projects that don't need custom logic, our website development cost guide may be the better starting point.
What Pushes the Price Up
- Old code. Laravel 5 to 8 or PHP 7 apps need several upgrade steps before new work starts.
- No tests. The team must add tests before it can change code safely.
- Integrations. Payment gateways, ERP, CRM and shipping systems each add build and testing time.
- Heavy traffic. Caching, queues, read replicas and load testing for busy apps.
- Paid packages. Nova, Spark and some admin themes carry licence fees. Ask early.
Contract Points for Laravel Work
- All code is assigned to you in writing, worldwide and for the full copyright term. Indian law treats an assignment with no stated term as five years and no stated territory as India only.
- Code lives in your repository. Servers, domain, email and payment accounts sit in your name.
- The Laravel and PHP versions, and a plan to stay on supported versions, are written into the scope.
- The company lists every Composer and npm package, its licence and any paid items.
- Named developers do the work, and changes need your approval.
Our software development contract checklist has the full clause list, and our guide on how to verify an Indian software company shows how to check registration and GST details.
The First 30 Days With a New Laravel Developer
- Week 1: Give access to the repository, a staging server and a copy of the database without real customer data. Agree coding rules and the review process.
- Week 2: They deliver the first feature or a written upgrade plan. You review working software, not a status report.
- Week 3: Check tests, secrets handling, queue failures and error logging.
- Week 4: Decide: continue, change the person or change the scope.
Finding Laravel Developers on UpBusiness
UpBusiness lists verified partner companies, mostly based in India. Every company has passed five checks reviewed by our team: company details, registration and tax papers, the founder's identity, expertise and three client projects with evidence. Only companies with a TrustScore of 70 or more are listed.
Laravel work usually sits under web and custom software development. Our website development page and custom software development page list companies that build web apps. Not every one names Laravel as a core service, so ask each for two Laravel apps and a code sample before you shortlist. If you're still choosing a back end, our guides on hiring Node.js developers, hiring React developers and Python developer rates cover the other common options.
- Post your requirement with Laravel, your current versions, budget and timeline.
- Get three partner companies matched to your budget, service and industry.
- Compare them side by side, run the paid test task or assessment with your favourite and start a two-week trial. Buyers pay nothing, and there's no commission on the project.
