If you've ever pushed your Laravel app to production and started noticing slow response times under heavy load, you’re not alone. Laravel is powerful, but like most PHP frameworks, it can feel sluggish when handling thousands of requests per second — especially when it has to boot the framework for every single request.
That’s where Laravel Octane comes in.
In this post, I’ll walk you through what Octane is, how it works, and how to get started with it to supercharge your Laravel app’s performance.
What is Laravel Octane?
Laravel Octane is a package that boosts the performance of your Laravel application by keeping it in memory between requests. Instead of booting up the entire framework for every request, Octane uses high-performance application servers like Swoole or RoadRunner to keep things running persistently.
In simpler words:
Octane makes Laravel faster — way faster.
It allows your app to handle more requests per second while using fewer resources. This makes it perfect for high-traffic applications, APIs, or even real-time dashboards.
Why Use Octane?
Here are a few reasons why Octane is a game-changer for Laravel developers:
- 🚀 Incredible speed — By removing the need to reload Laravel every time, you can see huge performance gains.
- ⚡ Concurrency — Octane can handle multiple requests simultaneously using Swoole or RoadRunner.
- 💡 Resource efficiency — It reduces memory usage and CPU load on your server.
- 🔁 Automatic reloading — You can make changes and reload Octane easily during development.
- 🌍 Scalability — Perfect for apps expecting traffic spikes or serving lots of concurrent users.
Step 1: Install Laravel Octane
Getting started is surprisingly simple.
First, make sure your Laravel version is 8.40+ or newer.
Then install Octane via Composer:
composer require laravel/octane
Once installed, publish the Octane configuration file:
php artisan octane:install
You’ll see a new config/octane.php file in your project.
Step 2: Choose a Server (Swoole or RoadRunner)
Octane supports two powerful servers:
- Swoole — a PHP extension offering high performance and coroutine support.
- RoadRunner — a Go-based application server that runs PHP workers.
For most cases, I personally prefer Swoole, because it’s easy to set up and works great out of the box.
To install Swoole:
pecl install swoole
Make sure it’s enabled in your php.ini.
If you prefer RoadRunner, you can install it using:
composer require spiral/roadrunner
Step 3: Run Your App with Octane
Once your preferred server is installed, it’s time to start Octane!
For Swoole:
php artisan octane:start --server=swoole
For RoadRunner:
php artisan octane:start --server=roadrunner
You’ll notice your app boots much faster and responses feel snappier.
Step 4: Optimize Your Code for Octane
Octane changes how Laravel handles memory. Since your application stays in memory, you have to be careful with what persists between requests.
Here are a few best practices:
✅ Avoid storing per-request data in static properties or singletons.
✅ Use Octane’s flush callbacks to clean up state after each request.
✅ Use Laravel’s cache, session, and queue systems normally — they’re all Octane-safe.
Example:
use Laravel\Octane\Facades\Octane;
Octane::tick('clear-cache', function () {
Cache::flush();
});
Step 5: Benchmark the Difference
Let’s see what all this work gives us.
Try using a benchmarking tool like wrk or ab (ApacheBench):
ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://127.0.0.1:8000/
You’ll likely see dramatic performance improvements, often 2x–10x faster than running Laravel with the default PHP-FPM setup.
Final Thoughts
Laravel Octane is one of those tools that feels magical once you try it. It takes your existing Laravel app — without changing your codebase much — and turns it into a high-performance, scalable application ready for production traffic.
If you’re running APIs, chat apps, dashboards, or anything that needs speed and scalability, Octane is absolutely worth the setup.
So go ahead, give it a spin, and feel the difference.
Further Reading:
