Laravel Forge vs Harbor

Laravel Forge9.4Visit Harbor8.5Visit

Higher score Laravel Forge #1 in Laravel Hosting 9.4/10 Paid ✓ 0 of 3 features Visit Laravel Forge

vs

Harbor #8 in Laravel Hosting 8.5/10 Paid ✓ 2 of 3 features Visit Harbor

• Laravel Forge fits best

  Laravel teams wanting mature deployment automation

• Harbor fits best

  Small Laravel apps needing simple managed hosting

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Side by side

Feature	Laravel Forge 9.4/10 Visit ↗	Harbor 8.5/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.4	8.5
Ranking	#1 in Laravel Hosting	#8 in Laravel Hosting
Best for	Laravel teams wanting mature deployment automation	Small Laravel apps needing simple managed hosting
Pricing model	Paid	Paid
Starting price	$120/yr	$50/unit/yr
Free plan	—	—
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web	Web
Built for	Solo, Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market
Features Laravel Forge 0/3 · Harbor 2/3
Queue workers	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Managed database	Not checked yet	✓ (best)
Staging environments	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
PHP versions	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Backup retention	Not checked yet	3 days
Deployment method	Not checked yet	Git
Our review
Pros	Zero-downtime deployments with retained releases for rollback Push-to-deploy from GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket Provisioning, SSL, monitoring, queues, schedulers, and databases	Git deployment with managed MariaDB, Redis, queues, and scheduler Daily database backups, logs, monitoring, DNS, TLS, and secrets Dedicated apps add high availability, SSH, and one-click rollback
Cons	No free plan is available Hobby includes only 1 external server Advanced support is limited to the Business plan	Shared apps use shared MariaDB and Redis resources The platform is available through the web only Access involves an invite or waitlist
Our verdict	Laravel Forge is a web-based server management and application deployment platform built by the Laravel team. It is designed for teams running Laravel and PHP applications, while also supporting vanilla PHP, WordPress, Statamic, static… Read the review →	Harbor is managed hosting for Laravel developers and teams that want to deploy from Git without managing servers. It builds application images, provisions MariaDB and Redis, configures DNS and TLS, and runs web, queue, and scheduler… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Laravel Forge — where it wins

  • Zero-downtime deployments with retained releases for rollback
  • Push-to-deploy from GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket
  • Provisioning, SSL, monitoring, queues, schedulers, and databases

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan is available
  • Hobby includes only 1 external server
  • Advanced support is limited to the Business plan

• Harbor — where it wins

  • Git deployment with managed MariaDB, Redis, queues, and scheduler
  • Daily database backups, logs, monitoring, DNS, TLS, and secrets
  • Dedicated apps add high availability, SSH, and one-click rollback

  Where it doesn't

  • Shared apps use shared MariaDB and Redis resources
  • The platform is available through the web only
  • Access involves an invite or waitlist

• Laravel Forge9.4/10 · Paid

  A focused choice for Laravel teams that want deep deployment and server automation.

  Visit Laravel ForgeFull verdict →
• Harbor8.5/10 · Paid

  A focused Laravel host with Git deployment, managed services, and low entry pricing.

  Visit HarborFull verdict →