Best Laravel Vapor Alternatives for Indie Hackers in 2026

On September 23, 2026, Taylor Otwell announced that Laravel is closing off new sign-ups to Vapor. Vapor was getting about five sign-ups a week, and the team thinks new customers are better served (and save money) on Laravel Cloud.

If you already run an app on Vapor, relax. Laravel has "absolutely no plans to shut down the platform for existing customers" and will keep it online, secure and patched.

But if you were about to put a new Laravel app on Vapor, you need a different plan. And if you're an existing customer, it's fair to ask how long a closed product stays a priority. For most indie hackers the answer is Laravel Cloud. Prices below were checked on September 29, 2026.

Quick Verdict

Do You Still Need Serverless?

Vapor's pitch was Lambda: instant autoscaling for spiky traffic, with your own AWS account paying the bill. Be honest about whether you used that. A side project doing a few thousand requests a day never needed it, and a VPS with a server panel is cheaper and easier to debug.

If you do have spiky traffic or thousands of queued jobs at once, stay in the managed or serverless column.

Laravel Cloud

Laravel Cloud is the official successor. Starter is $5 a month plus usage, includes $5 of monthly usage credit, and your first month is free. Growth is $20 plus usage and adds autoscaling up to 10 replicas and team roles. Business is $200.

The big change from Vapor: no AWS account. Laravel's Cloud vs Vapor page says Cloud runs on AWS infrastructure the Laravel team manages. So no IAM, no vapor.yml, no separate AWS invoice. Idle apps scale to zero and wake in under 500ms, and spending limits pause compute before you blow a budget. There's also a migration guide for Vapor apps.

Who shouldn't use it: teams that need their app inside their own AWS account, or tied to other AWS services. RDS and VPC peering are Private Cloud only, on the Enterprise tier.

Pick this if you want Vapor's "no servers" promise with less setup.

Bref

Bref is the closest thing to Vapor that still takes new users. It's an MIT-licensed open source project that runs PHP on AWS Lambda, with a Laravel bridge package. You deploy to your own AWS account, the same model Vapor used.

The framework is free. Bref Cloud adds a dashboard with zero markup on AWS prices. Personal is free for non-commercial apps, the Indie maker price is $15 a month for commercial solo projects, Startup is $39 and Team is $99.

Who shouldn't use it: anyone who picked Vapor so they'd never think about AWS. With Bref you own the Lambda limits, cold starts and IAM setup yourself.

Pick this if serverless on your own AWS account is a hard requirement.

Laravel Forge

Forge is the Laravel team's server panel, and it's the boring answer that fits most apps. Hobby is $12 a month (one external server, or unlimited servers on Laravel VPS), Growth is $19 and Business is $39. You pay for the server separately.

It gives you zero-downtime deploys and server monitoring on a VPS you control. Your bill is flat and predictable, which Lambda never was.

Who shouldn't use it: apps with sudden 50x traffic spikes. A VPS scales when you resize it, not in seconds.

Pick this if your traffic is steady and you want the official tooling. The Forge vs Ploi vs Coolify comparison goes deeper.

Ploi

Ploi does what Forge does for less. The Free plan covers one server, one site and five deployments a month. Basic is 8 euros a month for five servers, Pro is 13 euros for ten, and Unlimited is 30 euros. It bills in euros or dollars.

Paying yearly saves 10%.

Who shouldn't use it: teams that want the official Laravel product with first-party support. Ploi is third-party.

Pick this if Forge's pricing feels steep for a handful of small apps.

Coolify

Coolify is an open source panel you self-host for free, with unlimited servers and every feature included. Don't want to host the panel too? Coolify Cloud is $5 a month for two connected servers, plus $3 for each extra one. You bring your own servers either way.

It deploys more than Laravel. Databases, Docker apps and one-click services all run from the same dashboard.

Who shouldn't use it: anyone who wants zero ops. Self-hosted Coolify is one more thing to patch.

Pick this if you want a Heroku-style panel with no per-seat bill. The Heroku alternatives post covers more of this category.

How Do You Choose?

Start with traffic. Steady traffic means a VPS, and then it's Forge for the official tool, Ploi to save money, or Coolify to pay nothing. Spiky traffic means Laravel Cloud, unless you need to stay in your own AWS account, where Bref is the only real Vapor-shaped option left.

Not married to Laravel-specific hosting? The Railway vs Render vs Fly.io comparison covers general-purpose platforms that run PHP too.

Final Recommendation

New Laravel app that needs managed scaling? Laravel Cloud. Must stay on Lambda in your AWS account? Bref. Steady traffic on a VPS? Forge, or Ploi if you want it cheaper, or Coolify if you want it free. Existing Vapor app? No rush. Plan a move to Cloud when it suits you.

Found a better option? Let me know on Twitter @devtoolpicks.