Deploy and Host Laravel on Railway

Laravel is a sophisticated PHP web framework designed for building high-end web applications with elegant syntax. It streamlines common tasks like authentication, routing, sessions, and caching. By providing a rich set of tools and a robust ecosystem, Laravel allows developers to focus on creating features rather than repetitive boilerplate code.

About Hosting Laravel

Hosting and deploying Laravel requires an environment capable of running PHP and managing a relational database—in this case, PostgreSQL. The process involves configuring a web server (like Nginx or Apache), managing environment variables via .env files, and setting up a task scheduler (Cron) for background jobs. Modern deployment on platforms like Railway leverages containerization (Docker) or Nixpacks to automate the build process. Key steps include running database migrations, optimizing the configuration cache, and ensuring secure SSL/TLS termination, all of which Railway handles seamlessly through its automated CI/CD pipeline integrated with GitHub.

How to Use

After deploying this template, the app is already running on Railway. You can open the generated Railway domain to test the starter app immediately.

If you want to customize the source code, use one of the workflows below.

Via Railway CLI

Use this workflow if you want to edit the project locally and redeploy changes directly from your machine using Railway CLI.

Deploy the template.
Clone the repository from Source Repo or Upstream Repo in the Railway dashboard.
Enter the project directory:

cd

Link your local project directory to the deployed Railway project:

railway link

Check the linked project, environment, service, and repository information:

railway status

Edit the code locally.
Redeploy your local changes to Railway:

railway up

Railway will upload the current local directory and deploy it to the linked service.

Via Git / GitHub

Use this workflow if you want to manage changes through GitHub and let Railway automatically redeploy after every push.

Deploy the template.
Open Source Repo or Upstream Repo from the Railway dashboard.
Fork the repository to your own GitHub account.
Clone your fork locally:

git clone 
cd

Edit the code locally.
Commit and push your changes to your fork:

git add .
git commit -m "Customize Node.js starter"
git push origin main

In Railway, change the service Source Repo to your fork if Railway does not automatically create or link it.
After the service is connected to your fork, future pushes to the repository can trigger automatic redeployments.

Common Use Cases

Enterprise Web Applications: Building scalable, secure, and maintainable internal systems for corporate environments.
RESTful API Development: Serving as a powerful backend for mobile apps or single-page applications (SPAs) using Laravel Sanctum.
E-commerce Platforms: Leveraging Laravel’s robust payment integration and inventory management capabilities.

Dependencies for Laravel Hosting

PHP 8.2+ Engine: The core runtime required to execute Laravel’s application logic.
PostgreSQL Database: A powerful, open-source object-relational database system for persistent data storage.

Deployment Dependencies

Why Deploy Laravel on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Laravel on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.