# Laravel on Railway

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/stacks/laravel-on-railway/

Railway publishes its own guide for deploying Laravel.

PHP web framework with an ORM, queue workers and a scheduler that expects a persistent process.

## What Laravel needs

Every host claims to run Laravel, so the claim on its own decides nothing. These are the things Laravel requires from the platform underneath it, and what Railway publishes about each. Railway documents 4 of the 4.

| Requirement | Railway | Why it matters |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Persistent processes | Supported | Queue workers and Horizon are long-running processes, not requests. They have to stay up between jobs. |
| Managed databases | Limited | Eloquent, migrations and the default session and cache drivers all expect a relational database. |
| Scheduled jobs | Supported | Laravel's scheduler is one cron entry calling schedule:run every minute. Without cron, nothing scheduled ever fires. |
| Persistent storage | Supported | The default filesystem disk writes uploads under storage/app. On an ephemeral filesystem those files disappear at the next deploy. |

- Persistent processes source: https://docs.railway.com/services
- Managed databases source: https://docs.railway.com/databases
- Scheduled jobs source: https://docs.railway.com/reference/cron-jobs
- Persistent storage source: https://docs.railway.com/reference/volumes

## What Railway documents

> This guide covers how to deploy a Laravel app on Railway in three ways.

Source: https://docs.railway.com/guides/laravel

### Laravel features on Railway

- **laravel_scheduler**: Supported — Cron Service: Manages scheduled tasks (e.g., sending emails or running reports). [...] # This block of code runs the Laravel scheduler every minute ([source](https://docs.railway.com/guides/laravel))
- **storage_disk_mount**: Supported — Volumes allow you to store persistent data for services on Railway. [...] For example, if your application writes data to ./data, you should mount the volume to /app/data. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/guides/volumes))
- **managed_mysql**: Limited — The Railway MySQL database template allows you to provision and connect to a MySQL database with zero configuration. [...] While these templates are available for your convenience, they are considered unmanaged, meaning you have total control over their configuration and maintenance. ([source](https://docs.railway.com/guides/mysql))
- **native_php_runtime**: Supported — Railway uses Railpack to build and deploy your code with zero configuration. [...] Currently, we support the following languages out of the box: Node Python Go PHP ([source](https://docs.railway.com/reference/railpack))

## What it costs to run there

|  | Railway |
| --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $5 / month (Hobby) |
| Pricing model | A base subscription fee that goes towards usage, with the plan's own credit included; anything beyond the credit is billed as resource usage. |
| When you exceed a cap | Billed automatically: on the Hobby plan ($5/month, includes $5 of resource usage) usage above the included amount is charged as a delta on top of the subscription — no throttling or suspension is documented |
| Regions | 4 regions: California, Virginia, Amsterdam, Singapore |

- Entry paid plan source: https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans
- Pricing model source: https://docs.railway.com/reference/pricing/plans
- When you exceed a cap source: https://docs.railway.com/pricing/plans
- Regions source: https://docs.railway.com/reference/regions

## Whether it suits you

Teams that want a plan fee which doubles as usage credit, and deploy services straight from a Dockerfile without managing servers. The $5 Hobby fee comes back as $5 of resource usage.

Consider something else if: You need to run in a region outside California, Virginia, Amsterdam or Singapore.

Written by Palash Bagchi on 2026-09-05. This is a recommendation, not a sourced fact — it carries no citation because it is an opinion.

## Related

- Best hosting for Laravel: https://inetgeek.com/stacks/laravel/
- Railway: https://inetgeek.com/hosting/railway/