Laravel Cloud Pricing: HUGE Update (for smaller projects)

Hello guys. Core Laravel team have released a huge update to Laravel Cloud. This is kind of summarized in Taylor's tweet and also X article. But the main thing is that Laravel Cloud is now suitable for smaller and hobby projects and not just enterprise or B2B. So they're introducing $5 per month Laravel Cloud starter plan which includes the credits to use and also the hibernation the wake up is now usable basically. In this video I will show you my process how I'm migrating my current Laravel Cloud hobby project to a new environment to a new server or app cluster as they call it and I will show you how much I'm paying now and how much I'm expecting to pay on the new upgraded plan. And we will also test that wake up time in action. And this is also going to be a demonstration of Laravel Cloud if you haven't seen that in action. So I will actually create and deploy a new project from GitHub to Laravel Cloud. Let's dive in. So here I am on my current Laravel Cloud dashboard where I have only one application, a hobby project to manage my personal notes and philosophical phrases that I send to myself every day for inspiration. So that project is just a filament admin panel with a scheduled command to send emails random quotes from this list that I populate more and more whenever I see something. So the application itself is very simple. Just application Laravel and filament and the database MySQL in this case. And let me show you how much I'm paying for that on the cloud currently. So they have the usage page and current spend for my kind of half a month here is $6 and this is explained. So this is how much I'm paying for MySQL database. I also have PostgreSQL and we'll get to that later in this video. So I'm not using PostgreSQL at the moment and also I'm paying 259 for the app itself. So the price is calculated separately the application server and the database and whatever other resources you may want to add. And then if I go to settings invoices, this is the preview of the same period. So, this is how much I would pay currently, but this is only half a month. So, these are my invoices for the last months. So, you could say this was probably experiment month for some video. So, I pay $15 $16 per month for that very simple application. Now, let's try to shrink it down because technically I could deploy that on Laravel Forge on the cheapest Digital Ocean, which is like $6 per month instead of 15, right? But this is exactly what they want to change with this new starter plan. So, I will try to change my plan and then we'll shoot the video along the way as I'm doing that and we'll deploy a new application on a new server, which would be the same application just recreated in a separate repository. So, I would try to mimic how you would start from scratch. So, first you choose the plan in the billing and I'm on starter so-called legacy plan, which meant that I don't pay anything up front. I pay just for the usage as you saw, $15 per month. Let's select this new plan. I will zoom out so you can read the options. So, starter, growth, and business. And for that starter, this is the important part. $5 per month. So, this is a subscription, but that would be included as your usage credit. Let's try it out. So, I will upgrade to that starter plan and will probably pay $6 now right away. And okay, my plan is updated. Also, a new thing, spending limits. So, you can set the straight line up to which amount you want to get billed. For now, I'm not going to do that and let's create a new application, new server. So, let's create new application and I choose the GitHub repository that I want to use. My application name, my notes, okay, and region I will choose something in Europe, Frankfurt, for example. Create application. Okay, and now you see a familiar kind of schema what do we have in that application? So, we have by default cluster of one VCPU and 1/2 GB of RAM. Add resource. So, if we open that now, I think we do need a database. And since we're talking about pricing here, the database choice is pretty important because MySQL at the moment cannot hibernate, and hibernation is the main thing of how you can shrink down the price because the wake up is faster. So, you can afford to hibernate your app and your database while you're not working on the application and while no one is visiting that. So, for database, this is specifically why I made my migrations and seeders database agnostic. So, in the repository I have this, and I asked AI to do that from previous database. So, it has JSON files, and then it has separate function for handling PostgreSQL specifically. Maybe I over engineered here, but basically what you need to know is PostgreSQL can hibernate, and this is why I would choose that for this demo project. On Twitter, Dave from Laravel core team promised that MySQL hibernation and scaling to zero is coming very soon. It was similar actually when they launched Laravel Cloud in the first place. They launched with PostgreSQL and only then added MySQL like months later. I guess there are some extra technical challenges to make MySQL work as they want. But anyway, let's choose PostgreSQL 17, or we can of course create a new cluster with Postgres 18, but I don't care that much about the version and let's choose that one and create a new database here. And basically, I'm paying as I understand for the cluster and it's uptime with however many databases you want. So, database name my notes, for example, create database and we have unsaved changes. Let's save them. We can save and deploy or just save only. For now, I haven't yet. Okay, so now we have compute and database. But see that sleep after 300 seconds. And this is the main point again how we save money. Edit settings and we have low unit of compute. That is also price saving. And scale to zero is enabled automatically. Let me zoom that in so you would see that. So, when no activity is detected for 300 seconds, which is 5 minutes, then it will basically go to sleep, the database cluster. So, let's leave it as it is. And also, we may do the same for the app cluster. Edit settings and also I'm not sure why sleep after here is in 5 minutes and in database is in seconds, but okay. In this case, in this application, I do need scheduler because I send emails to myself twice a day. So, I enable that and I save only for now. That save, by the way, basically restarts, recreates, as I understand, the whole infrastructure. Let's see if we need to change something else here. Not at the moment, I think. Also, we may, of course, choose the price, which is currently capped at $7 per month for this starting server, starting app cluster, they call it. But you can, of course, choose something more expensive. But again, the point of this video is to shrink down the price. Now, cloud domain, what do we need here? Okay, we have this dummy domain, which I would be fine because it's an internal application, but I want to change it to something more meaningful. Is that available? My notes Laravel Cloud every environment includes one domain for free. Okay, let's save it and let's see. Okay, and that pending mean domain will activate after deployment. So, now let's go to deployments and what is the script of deployment? We can find it in settings and deployments. Let's check. So, composer install and NPM run build. That's it, right? What about the database? Oh, that's down below. PHP artisan migrate force. For now, for the first time, let's add seed here. I will change that later. This is how I often do the things on Laravel Forge as well. So, for the first deployment, I add seeders for only one time and then I change it back. Okay, and I guess that's it. Let's try to deploy for the first time and see if it works. So, I will hit deploy and let's see. I remember when they launched Laravel Cloud, Taylor on stage was showing that deployment under 1 minute. I'm not sure if it's still active with all those changes, but it should be pretty fast actually. Okay, we have that part finished. Build logs in 36 seconds and now here. And that's it, successfully deployed. It was not under a minute, a bit over a minute, but not a big deal. So, 1 minute and 11 seconds. And now, what happens if we click visit? We click visit and it works. So, this is kind of the magic of Laravel Cloud. I didn't need to specify any like database credentials or anything. I just go to {slash} admin and if my seeders worked correctly, I can log in with my default user, which I specified in the seeder. So, let's click sign in and see if it works. Am I in? Yes, I'm in. Do we have notes imported? Yes, it just works. So, the magic of Laravel Cloud like deployment under a minute and it just works still works. Great. Now, I need to not forget to change back the deployment script to not contain seeders anymore. So, I go to deployments and remove that thing. Save. I don't need to redeploy in this case. And now, let's try to calculate how much we would pay. So, if I go to my usage page now, which is refreshed with my current new starter plan, this is what I'm paying for now. So, the database MySQL in this case, which I will not use anymore and I will later destroy that droplet, that cluster, but I'm paying for MySQL even if I'm not using that just for storage, which is 3 GB and I'm pretty sure I don't have 3 GB there. So, something is to investigate there and then backups. So, this is what I will pay for that older application no matter what if I don't even use it and if I understand correctly, this will be deducted from my 5-hour per month plan. And on new my notes application, I don't see any usage yet, which is logical because it is updated hourly. So, I'll probably come back to this page in an hour or two and look if we have the numbers here. But, while we don't have the numbers yet, I want to test one more thing, the wake up time. So, I'm here like 10 minutes later and my cluster went to sleep. So, as you can see, sleeping for 1 minute. And now, let's try to visit the page and see the network speed. It doesn't say if the database is sleeping, but it says sleep after 300 seconds. So, I would expect them to be in sync probably. And now, I go to the page which I was on previously, so it was preloaded and I will just refresh in my browser. And let's watch the network tab. Let's zoom that in and let's see the timing. So, I refresh. nodes And yes, it's milliseconds. Well, actually not exactly milliseconds. The first nodes is 1.63 seconds. So, I guess that is a wake-up time because the application itself is really small and it should be really fast. But even 1.63 seconds, for many websites, it's a default loading time. So, it's totally not a big deal even if it's not 500 milliseconds if they don't achieve that every time. And also, I'm not sure if waking up the server and the database simultaneously doesn't calculate together. And now, if we go and see the same dashboard, now it says awake 1 minute ago, exactly what happened. So, yeah, the thing that they advertise on the official blog or elsewhere that it wakes 20 times faster. I'm not sure about 20 times, but it doesn't matter that much, the specifics. The thing is that it used to be 10 to 20 seconds. Like, really, I did test that like a year ago. Which means that the mechanism actually works. So, our application and database goes to sleep. And if we have like 100 visitors per day, we will be charged for hours and minutes of that time when our application is actually serving the customers. And here I am a few hours later, back to computer. I decided to not wait the full day for a refresh. So, this usage is updated hourly and it was updated 6 minutes ago. And look at interesting numbers. So, we have 47 cents in total. And out of those 44 cents are for MySQL for older project, which is not hibernating. It doesn't go to sleep. So, that's why we pay for compute for 2 hours, 2 cents. and then it will be more money with each hour. And then also storage and backups, those are pretty static and should not go up. So, that's the separate section of pricing about resources, and databases is one of the types of resources. But look at nodes, serverless PostgreSQL. Zero storage, zero compute, zero dollars, although the database is running, sleeping actually. And this is explained a bit below. So, it's showing my new application, my nodes, and if we take a look at nodes, the older one for 2 hours, active 2 hours of CPU usage, we have 2 cents to pay. For the new application, which does go to sleep, look at that, 0.2 hours, although the same time has passed. But most of that time the application was sleeping, and it woke up only a few times for scheduled jobs and for a few pages that I showed in this video, which rounds up the pricing to, well, zero. So, that's exactly the mechanism which would lower the cost down to maybe potentially up to $5 or less per month. Well, $5 is the monthly fee for starter kit, and whatever you use, it's included in that plan, as I understand. Well, actually, in the billing, it's interesting in the invoices. The current invoice, I think it will be refreshing every day, so I'm not sure if the numbers are accurate because it shows Cloud Starter as $3, but that $3 is for part of the month. So, when I changed the plan, it had the invoice for what I had to pay on the older legacy starter plan, and this is the invoice for the new upcoming part of the month, as I understand. And this is what we have here. So, as I mentioned, MySQL storage and compute, so this is for the older project, which I will hibernate or remove later after this video, then environment compute for the new server. Or actually no, I'm wrong here. Those two cents are also for older server. And the new server has zero cents for environment compute and only one cent for Postgres. And there are taxes on top, which rounds up to 427. And I'm not sure if it goes up like in a week or when that period goes up, I will report that on Twitter. And in a separate post on this YouTube channel, I will not shoot a separate video, but I want to publish this video today, so I will not wait for that specific number for a few days. But now you should get the idea how that saving of cost and time and hibernation and waking up works in the updated Laravel Cloud infrastructure. So, although I'm not 100% sure about the upcoming future bill, but I think I can recommend Laravel Cloud for hobby projects like mine or with very low visitor numbers per day. Of course, it depends on your application and other performance, so how big is the database and stuff like that. So, as always, it depends. But if you have a new project without even visitors or customers yet and you need somewhere to deploy to, now you can do that for $5 a month on Laravel Cloud. So, what do you guys think? Would that convince you to try Laravel Cloud if you haven't yet? Or maybe you have other questions or issues that I could maybe pass to the core team to answer in the future videos? Let's discuss as usual in the comments below. That's it for this time and see you guys in other videos.