Understand Laravel development costs- ranges from $15 to $150/hr depending on the level of experience, location, and project complexity. Simple projects generally run $20K-40K, while enterprise-level solutions can hit $100K+, especially including continual support and infrastructure rebuild.
As you are planning your next Laravel project, be it a custom CRM, eCommerce platform, or SaaS MVP, one question repeats itself: Who should build this?
In 2025, Laravel is still one of the most trusted and developer-friendly frameworks for a backend, quickly building a secure and scalable web application. Maybe you are conducting an MVP for a SaaS product, developing a custom CMS, or building a front-end for an eCommerce portal. So it is likely that Laravel is already on your shortlist. But before you start writing any code, there is still one main question that you need to answer: How much will it cost to build my Laravel application – and what hiring model would be the most viable option?
The unfortunate truth is that the cost of Laravel development can vary drastically depending on how you decide to hire it. Are you going to hire an agency, go with an independent contractor/freelancer, or hire developers to work in-house?
This could be limited to just a financial decision, but it also impacts the time to market, the quality of the development, and scalability, to mention just a few. It’s important to have a good understanding of the advantages and disadvantages along with real-world cost examples for each hiring option before making a decision – especially when in need of every dollar and have a hard deadline.
In this blog, we are going to compare the cost of Laravel development in 2025 under three of the most common hiring engagement models. We will discuss hourly rates, budgets, and unexpected expenses as well as real-world examples – using data highlighted from Upwork, Clutch, Indeed, and PayScale – so you can make a reasonable decision that aligns with your business objectives.
Before we compare costs associated with hiring a freelancer, agency or even your own in-house team for developing on Laravel, I want to take a moment and discuss factors that impact pricing associated with Laravel development in 2025. Price won’t simply vary between hourly rates; costs are a function of technical, geographic, and project-specific considerations.
It is a general rule that the more complex your web application is, the more expensive it is to develop. A simple informational site with a contact form may only take 40-60 hours to develop, while a multi-tenant SaaS platform with role-based access, dashboards, custom APIs, etc., could run 400-600+ hours. Features such as real-time data syncing, processing payments, enhanced admin panels, or multilingual support will quickly add to the complexity of the project as well as the cost of development.
For example, “a custom CRM that has user roles, reporting dashboards, file uploads, etc., may be 5x-8x more than a static website.”
Like any other profession, levels of experience impact pricing. A mid-level Laravel developer may charge $25-40/hour, while a senior Laravel architect with 8+ years of experience for deployments could cost $70-100/hour or more. The important aspect here is that you’re not just paying for the code. You are paying for the thought process (architecture), problem solving, and decision-making associated with best practices, which will save you time and headaches in the future.
Laravel development costs vary enormously depending on the region. As per Upwork and Clutch’s data from 2025:
If you were thinking of hiring a remote team from around the world, the quality of service, their recent tech tools, such as Slack, GitHub, and ClickUp, have made working across borders substantially easier than ever.
Rush projects often have a “rush premium.” Meaning if you need your MVP live in 3 weeks, then developers will have to potentially put in overtime or shuffle other paying clients accordingly, which can mean a 20 – 40% increase in their rates. Longer timelines typically offer more flexibility and lower costs.
Development is not a one-off cost. Who will resolve bugs, host updates, or add new features after you launch? Ongoing Laravel support typically costs 10 – 20% of the original development budget per year, agencies working as a Care Plan or greater than 1 month retainer, and freelancers typically ad hoc bill as needed.
The development model you choose to build your Laravel web application will dramatically impact the cost, workflow, accountability and maintainability of your project from this point forward. Below is a description of each model:
Freelancers are often a great option for startups, solopreneurs and small businesses due to their flexibility and low costs. By 2025 there will be a launch of freelancer platforms such as Upwork, Toptal and Fiverr Business, saturated with many experienced Laravel developers, to hire on a project or hourly basis. There are certainly quality developers at ranges of $25–50/hour mainly from regions such as India, Pakistan and Eastern Europe.
While the case to hire a freelancer is strong for budget reasons, consider that freelancers will usually only work as a solo entity, especially if you factor in their limited project management, limited ability for QA/beta testing, limited integration of the designs, limited deployment etc.. So you will be relying exclusively on one person’s work, and one person’s timeline and communication with your team.
There is far more risk if this first-time freelancer just disappears, or they are not available for any future updates, or they may deliver code and not have any QA or Bug testing to ensure it is indeed working correctly.
Freelancers are recommended for rapid builds of MVPs and quick fixes, or if you are in control of the development as a technical lead.
Digital agencies are full-service, knowing they will work in tandem with designers, backend/front-end developers, QA testers, and project managers in the same space to provide a well-run project. Accordingly, agencies are more expensive as they typically charge $50 – $150/hour depending on reputational and geographical factors, but they deliver project teams, professionalism, framework, and longevity.
For example, with a Laravel agency, you get:
Agencies lend themselves to businesses wanting end-to-end solutions or faster time to market or ongoing support for growth (e.g., maintenance, growth/expansion, or analytic integrations). You pay more for an agency, but you get security, advice, and scalable systems.
If you’re interested in having complete control over your codebase, product roadmap, and having a team aligned to work on the same product, hiring Laravel developers in-house is an option. This is a good choice when developing enterprise software or SaaS products because better integration between development, marketing, and business teams is established.
However, in-house hiring has overheads, salaries, recruiting, benefits, hardware and licenses, taxes, and HR costs. As of 2025:
You also consider the time and expense to recruit, onboard, and retention. This is best if you’re building the product long term, work on the product daily, and have the budget to sustain these operational expenses.
Having a thorough understanding of the real costs associated with Laravel development means examining the numbers associated with each hiring model—not merely by the hour but by the total cost to build, maintain and scale your web application. Below is a comparison table with numeral values to help you better understand, and following that table, you will find a paragraph summarizing what these numbers suggest in reality.
Model | Avg. Hourly Rate | Monthly Cost (Est.) | Annual Cost (Est.) | Best For |
Freelancer | $25 – $50/hr | $2,000 – $6,000 | $24,000 – $72,000 | MVPs, small projects, startups with tech lead |
Agency | $20 – $120/hr | $6,000 – $25,000 | $70,000 – $300,000+ | End-to-end builds, scalable platforms, business-critical apps |
In House | $35 – $90/hr (avg. salary basis) | $6,000 – $12,000 (including benefits) | $72,000 – $150,000+ | SaaS products, enterprise apps, long-term internal tools |
Note: At least the estimates will vary by region. For example, a freelance Laravel developer in India may earn $20/hr, while the same developer in the U.S. could earn $70/hr+. If an agency is located somewhere in South Asia or Eastern Europe, they are often providing the same skill set around 40–60% less than their more wealthy Western counterparts.
What does this mean:
To sum up, agencies usually offer the best option for companies that are growing and are looking for faster delivery with less risk. Freelancers are usually better suited for quick testing or temporary deliverables. In-house is not a bad option; it is a long-term investment with a little more overhead but subsequently better control and culture fit; it is best for enterprise-level apps or products that will require iteration in the future.
When considering a Laravel development project, the cost may not only determine whether or not it proceeds forward, it may be the quality of work, communication style, and accountability that determine if you will be in a position to deliver a project. Given that you may be developing a business’s core SaaS platform or eCommerce portal, it is likely that the experience users will have will be based mostly on execution, not a tech stack.
Freelancers can provide a degree of personal attention and flexibility, but they have limited oversight that may lead to inconsistent execution and accountability.
Freelancers are typically most effective when they have a technical project manager or a CTO, responsible for reviewing work to ensure long-term code consistency.
Laravel development agencies are often organized around processes—agile sprints, quality assurance cycles, and documentation formatting.
Agencies are a great option when you don’t have capacity internally but need ordered timelines and someone who can scale the product with your business.
Laravel developers are the hardest to control internally, but that turns into the highest degree of control, though that doesn’t always mean higher quality unless you are a good manager.
In-house teams are great when you are working on an iterative product that requires domain knowledge. But if you’re launching an initial version as quickly as possible, and you do not need domain knowledge to do so, in-house teams may struggle to meet your required velocity initially.
Factor | Freelancer | Agency | In-house Team |
Quality Control | Varies by individual | Team-driven with QA processes | Depends on internal management |
Accountability | Low to medium | High (contracts, SLAs, PM oversight) | Medium to high (internal policies) |
Communication Speed | Depends on freelancer | Structured & proactive | Instant, but requires alignment |
Best For | One-off projects, MVPs | Full-scale apps, growth-stage orgs | Long term product lifecycle |
One of the most common concerns that surface in the planning of a Laravel web application is “How fast can we deliver?” The speed of delivery is heavily dependent on the individual or company you are developing your application with, either as a freelancer, agency or in-house team, along with the structure the developers have in their own development process of creating a web application.
Freelancers tend to develop quickly. You don’t have to go through lots of onboarding or Human Resources processes; you just need to have a conversation about the scope of your project, sign a contract, and then execute your development agreement and get started.
My own experience is that freelancers are great to test an idea quickly, but just be prepared for additional challenges as the illustrating or full implementations of the initial projects increase most significantly to adjust to project needs.
Working with a Laravel agency is similar to working with a mini-software factory. When the scope has been clearly defined, the Laravel agency will ramp up a lot faster than freelancers are able to do; therefore, it will use roughly 25–40% less time than the freelancer would use to build something of similar complexity.
Agencies are the best option for having a defined timeline with tangible deliverables. If your business cannot go longer than 3 months to launch a Laravel app, this is the safest option.
Nonetheless, once an internal team ramps up, they can primarily work faster for your long-term iterations since they have so much knowledge about the product and can work through continuous improvements without external barriers.
If your product will evolve significantly over the next 12-18 months, bringing an internal team can save you from rework and technology debt later, even if it slows you down in the short term.
Factor | Freelancer | Agency | In-house Team |
Setup Time | Fast (1–7 days) | Medium (7–14 days onboarding) | Slow (30–60 days to hire/setup) |
Development Speed | Fast at first, then slower | Consistent sprint-based delivery | Slower start, fast long-term |
Parellel Task Handling | Limited | Yes (design/dev/QA overlap) | Yes, if team is large enough |
Best Use Case | Quick MVP or pilot feature | Full app launch with clear deadline | Long-term product roadmaps |
Creating a Laravel application is just the first step, but what happens after your product is launched is what is really going to define the success of your product. Bugs occur, users submit feedback and business needs change over time. There is a significant difference in your ability to troubleshoot and support the app in a timely manner without having to incur additional costs again. Your options for who you choose to build it (freelancer, agency or in-house) are going to materially affect your ability to do this in the future.
While there are many freelance Laravel developers who are willing to offer some Post-Launch support, this is often inconsistent.
Risk Warning: If you have a business-critical app, no matter what the nature of the application (a SaaS product or client-facing portal), then committing to only having a freelance developer provide ongoing support is too risky unless you have established very clear SLAs (Service Level Agreements).
Laravel development agencies usually provide multiple levels of long-term support, typically in a proposal or in bundles with care plans.
This is where agencies excel. You have better continuity, speed, and piece of mind; and they usually are presented to you in a predictable cost structure.
Tip – Ask the agency if they are providing Laravel LTS (Long-Term Support) upgrades as part of your contract. These upgrades are important for keeping your application secure longer term.
An in-house team means you own everything – the code, the servers, the uptime, and the user experience. That is both a burden and a blessing.
Pro insight: In-house teams are excellent for products that will have a fast evolution, serve a large user base, or are subject to frequent experiments or iterations. Don’t forget about the continuous HR and management investment long term.
Factors | Freelancer | Agency | In-house Team |
Post-launch availability | Depends on their schedule | Guaranteed as per contract | 100% owned by your company |
Bug resolution speed | Variable (1–5 days) | Fast (based on SLA, often 24–72 hrs) | Fastest (same day or within hours) |
Long-term continuity | Risk of dropout | Stable (documented, team-based) | Stable (retained knowledge in-house) |
Cost of support | Ad-hoc ($15–$60/hr) | Monthly retainer ($500–$2,000+/mo) | Full salaries + tools + infrastructure |
Ideal For | Basic fixes or MVP testing | Growing businesses with uptime goals | Scaling product teams and SaaS founders |
The quality of your Laravel application’s codebase is ultimately a major factor in how scalable, maintainable, and onboardable it is.
The sort of team you hire – freelancer, agency or in house – also varies greatly in terms of how good, scalable, and documented your code will be.
Freelancer code quality is a roll of the dice. You could get a Laravel artisan who wrote clean, testable and well-documented code – or you could get someone who raced through it using spaghetti logic and shortcuts to meet deliverables.
Tip: Always ask to see code samples for freelancers you hope to hire. Check for clean use of Laravel controllers, service classes, migrations and unit tests.
Good Laravel development Agencies treat clean code as an aspiration not an aspiration; there’s a difference.
Bonus: Some Agencies are taking the Elevated position using static analysis, such as PHPStan or Larvel Pint, to maintain coding standard consistency with historical coding practices, without causal deviations.
In-house teams differ dramatically in terms of experience level, but if you manage them correctly, they can produce beautiful, maintainable codebases.
Pro Tip: Put your money into code linters (like PHP-CS-Fixer or Pint), invest in automated testing pipelines (like GitHub Actions or Bitbucket Pipelines) and enforce internal code review policies.
Criteria | Freelancer | Agency | In-House Team |
Code consistency | Varies significantly | High (due to coding standards) | High (with internal guidelines) |
Documentation quality | Often minimal unless requested | Structured handovers, readmes, API docs | Depends on team discipline and culture |
Testing & QA | Often missing | Included in project scope | Can be extensive with dedicated QA devs |
Risk of technical debt | High if left unmanaged | Low (agencies document and plan architecture) | Medium (depends on leadership) |
Best Fit For | Short-term MVPs or prototypes | Stable, maintainable web apps | Scalable, evolving long-term products |
i.e. approving an internal dashboard, public SaaS platform, or a mobile app backend. The infrastructure decisions and DevOps implementations will affect uptime, scalability, speed of deployment, and ongoing costs. With Laravel, there is some flexibility in the hosting, however, the developer you engage (freelance, agency or in-house), will impact how streamlined and reliable your deployments will be.
The majority of freelancers using Laravel stick to managed shared hosting (i.e. Hostinger, SiteGround and A2 Hosting) or set up a simple VPS (i.e. DigitalOcean or Linode) but only using manual deployment.
Pros:
Cons:
Tip: Some of the freelance Laravel developers are now providing deployment through Laravel Forge which automates provisioning, SSL, queues, and backups on DigitalOcean or AWS.
Agencies who specialize in Laravel development are typically keeping up to speed with modern DevOps pipelines that implement the full mentality of DevOps.
Example workflow: Code pushed to Github –> Automated tests commenced –> Staging deployed –> Manual approval –> Released to production –> Notified in Slack.
An in-house development team gives you 100% ownership of your hosting stack, deployment strategy, and long-term DevOps development, but that ownership comes with responsibility and expertise needed.
Usage Note: Without established DevOps talent, internal teams are often spending more time putting out fires with their servers than building features.
Criteria | Freelancer | Agency | In-House Team |
Hosting Type | Shared/VPS, Laravel Forge | Cloud VPS, Managed Hosting, Docker, Vapor | Fully Custom (Cloud, On-Prem, Hybrid) |
CI/CD Support | Rare | Standard (Git-based deployment) | Advanced (Custom pipelines & automation) |
Infrastructure Scaling | Manual | Semi-automated (auto-scaling, serverless) | Fully managed + custom (microservices, etc.) |
Monitoring & Alerts | Minimal or 3rd-party tools | Tools like Sentry, New Relic, Uptime Robot | Full-stack observability (Grafana, Prometheus) |
Ideal For | Simple apps or MVPs | Growth-stage products | Mission-critical or regulated applications |
Laravel development costs, as you will learn in 2025, goes beyond hourly rates. It is also about how those hourly rates are translated, compounded, and incorporated across the lifecycle of your web application project. Whether you are building an MVP, scaling up an enterprise tool, or maintaining a legacy product, the total cost of ownership (TCO) will vary wildly depending on the engagement model.
Let’s now breakdown the real costs between freelancer, agencies, and in-house Laravel development teams.
Freelancer Laravel developers are a popular option for startups, solopreneurs, and non-technical founders creating MVPs or unique project deliverables.
Average Hourly Rate (2025):
Estimated Project Cost
Pros
Cons
Example: 1 Canadian entrepreneur used Toptal and paid their Senior Laravel freelancer $70/hour for 2 months to develop an invoice tracking tool. Total cost: ~$11,000 (source: Toptal Case Study).
When you engage with agencies, they offer your business a complete team of professionals– developers, UI/UX designers, QA testers, project managers and DevOps — all under one roof.
Average Hourly Rate (2025):
Estimated Project Cost:
Pros:
Cons:
Example: A fintech client developed a custom admin panel and billing system utilizing a Laravel agency in India. The team was about 5 people over a 12-week engagement. The total cost was $28,500 (source: Clutch.co verified reviews).
Hiring Laravel developers in-house gives you complete control, however it does come with overhead and long-term commitment.
Annual Salaries Average (2025):
Additional Costs:
Estimated Yearly Cost for 1 Mid-Senior Dev (US):
Pros:
Cons:
Example: According to Glassdoor, the average Laravel developer salary in New York in 2025 is ~$96,000/year, excluding bonuses and benefits.
Project Type | Freelancer Estimate | Agency Estimate | In-House Annual Cost |
Basic MVP Website | $2,000–$5,000 | $6,000–$12,000 | $90,000+ (annualized) |
SaaS Dashboard | $6,000–$12,000 | $15,000–$45,000 | $110,000+ |
eCommerce Platform | $8,000–$15,000 | $20,000–$60,000 | $120,000+ |
Long-Term Maintenance | $500–$1,000/month | $1,000–$4,000/month | $8,000/month (salary + ops) |
Tip: Agencies may cost more upfront, but reduce your DevOps, design, and testing costs—often leading to a lower TCO over 12–18 months.
Choosing the development model for your Laravel web application in 2025 will depend on your goals, budget, and risk appetite.
Here’s a quick summary of what you’ve learned;
If You’re a Startup or Solo Founder:
Hire a Laravel Freelancer
You’ll get to a faster TTM and grow lean. Just be sure to screen for experience, ask for code samples, and consider including a part-time QA or designer.
If You Want End-to-End Execution:
Hire a Laravel Agency
Their ideal customer base is small businesses, medium enterprises, or funded startups that are seeking good code, solid UX/UI, project management, and support once the project is completed. Hiring an agency tends to be more expensive than hiring a freelancer, but hiring agencies to gauge the development work available can help ensure that you have a more structured and scalable development model.
If You’re Building a Product with a Long-Term Vision:
Build an In-House Laravel Team
You’ll have ultimate control, greater stability over the long haul, and cultural alignment. It’s a long-term play, so prepare yourself for recruiting, training, and recruitment overhead. This path best suits funded software as a service startups or digital-first businesses.
Criteria | Freelancer | Laravel Agency | In-House Team |
Budget-Friendly | ✅✅✅ | ✅✅ | ❌ (High upfront cost) |
Fast Delivery | ✅✅✅ | ✅✅ | ❌ (Hiring takes time) |
Scalable & Future-Proof Code | ⚠️ (depends on dev) | ✅✅✅ | ✅✅✅ |
Ongoing Support & Maintenance | ❌ (extra cost) | ✅✅✅ | ✅✅ |
DevOps & QA Support | ❌ | ✅✅✅ | ⚠️ (internal setup needed) |
Project Management Included | ❌ | ✅✅✅ | ✅ |
Ideal For | MVPs, small sites | Full-featured apps | Long-term product dev |
Laravel is still one of the most powerful, flexible, and best-documented backend frameworks available in 2025. Whether you are building a custom CRM, software as a service application, internal tool, or secure eCommerce site—Laravel can do it.
But how you develop is just as important as what you develop.
There’s no one-size-fits-all. The best decision you could make is the one that best fits your business priorities and how you wish to allocate your resources in terms of budget, people, and time.
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