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Dev.to
7/14/2026
Laravel Cloud's $5 Plan vs a $5 VPS: The Real Cost Math

Laravel Cloud's $5 Plan vs a $5 VPS: The Real Cost Math

Short summary

A detailed total-cost-of-ownership comparison between Laravel Cloud's $5 Starter plan and a $5 VPS for a real Laravel app with queue workers, schedulers, database, and cache. The article shows that hibernation saves money for idle workloads but queue workers, cron schedulers, and always-on database/cache instances reintroduce steady costs. For production SaaS apps with continuous workloads, a flat-rate VPS often remains cheaper.

  • •Laravel Cloud's $5 tier is great for idle apps but costly for always-on workloads
  • •Queue workers, schedulers, and databases can't hibernate, reintroducing steady metered costs
  • •A $5 Hetzner VPS often wins for real production Laravel SaaS apps

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