The Laravel ecosystem is one of the richest in web development. There are first-party tools from the Laravel team, thousands of community packages, multiple IDE integrations, deployment platforms, testing frameworks, AI integrations, admin panels, monitoring solutions and the list grows every year.
The problem is that nobody has mapped it all in one place.
This post is that map. Every tool is categorized, described with its core use case, and ranked within its category so you know what to reach for first. Whether you’re a solo developer setting up your first Laravel project or a tech lead auditing your team’s toolchain, this directory covers the complete Laravel ecosystem in 2026.
Bookmark this page. You’ll come back to it.
1. Official Laravel First-Party Tools
These are tools built and maintained directly by the Laravel team. When a first-party solution exists for a problem, use it before reaching for a community package — it will stay compatible with every major Laravel release.
Laravel Horizon — Queue monitoring and management. Horizon gives you a real-time dashboard for all your queue workers, job throughput, failed jobs, and wait times. At the scale where queues matter, Horizon is essential. It uses Redis as its backend and ships with a beautiful UI out of the box.
Laravel Telescope — Application debugging and introspection. Every HTTP request, database query, queued job, mail, notification, and log entry is captured and browsable. Invaluable in development and useful selectively in staging. Turn it off in production or protect the dashboard carefully.
Laravel Pulse — Real-time application performance monitoring. Pulse is the production-facing counterpart to Telescope. It shows aggregate performance data — slow routes, slow queries, job throughput, exception rates, cache hit ratios, active sessions — in a dashboard designed for operational use. Available free, open-source.
Laravel Reverb — First-party WebSocket server. Reverb handles real-time events natively in your Laravel application without Pusher or Ably dependencies. Integrates directly with Laravel Broadcasting. Managed WebSocket hosting is also available through Laravel Cloud.
Laravel Octane — High-performance application server. Octane boots your application once and keeps it in memory, handling thousands of requests without re-bootstrapping. Run it with Swoole or RoadRunner. For high-traffic applications, Octane is a significant throughput multiplier.
Laravel Scout — Full-text search integration. Scout provides a simple, driver-based approach to adding full-text search to Eloquent models. Supports Algolia, Meilisearch, and database-native search. Meilisearch is the recommended self-hosted option in 2026.
Laravel Pennant — Feature flags. Pennant provides a lightweight feature flag implementation built directly into the framework. Essential for gradual rollouts, A/B testing, and managing releases across different user segments.
Laravel Sanctum — API token authentication. For SPA authentication and simple API token management. If you’re building an API consumed by your own frontend, Sanctum is the right choice over the heavier Passport.
Laravel Passport — Full OAuth 2.0 server. When you need to act as an OAuth provider — letting third-party applications authenticate against your Laravel app — Passport is the right tool. More complex than Sanctum; use it when you actually need OAuth, not as a default.
Laravel Socialite — Social authentication. OAuth login with Google, GitHub, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and dozens more providers via community drivers. The standard solution for social login in Laravel.
Laravel Cashier (Stripe) — Billing and subscriptions. Cashier provides an expressive, fluent interface to Stripe’s subscription billing services. Handles subscriptions, invoices, trial periods, coupons, and payment method management. A Braintree driver is also available.
Laravel Dusk — Browser testing. Dusk drives a real Chrome browser for end-to-end testing. In 2026, Pest 4 now includes browser testing via Playwright as well, which is worth evaluating for new projects.
Laravel Sail — Local Docker development environment. Sail provides a pre-configured Docker environment for local development with a single sail up command. Includes PHP, MySQL, Redis, Meilisearch, and more. Zero local PHP installation required.
Laravel Pint — PHP code style fixer. Pint is a zero-configuration PHP CS Fixer wrapper that enforces the opinionated Laravel coding style automatically. Run it in CI to keep your codebase consistent.
Laravel Nightwatch — Production application monitoring (2025/2026). Nightwatch is the newest first-party addition — a full Laravel application performance monitoring solution built to replace third-party APM tools like Datadog and New Relic for Laravel-specific needs. Tracks requests, jobs, exceptions, and queries with Laravel-native context.
2. IDEs & Code Editors
PhpStorm (JetBrains) — The gold standard for Laravel development. PhpStorm has deep Laravel plugin support, Blade template highlighting, Eloquent model analysis, Artisan command integration, and PHPUnit/Pest runners built in. The paid subscription is worth it for full-time Laravel developers. The Laravel Idea plugin extends PhpStorm’s Laravel intelligence further.
Visual Studio Code — The free alternative with excellent Laravel support. The PHP Intelephense extension provides code intelligence. Add Laravel Extra Intellisense, Blade Snippets, and GitLens for a near-PhpStorm experience at zero cost. The most popular choice for developers joining the Laravel community from JavaScript backgrounds.
Cursor — AI-native IDE. Cursor is VS Code with deep AI code completion and chat built in. For Laravel developers working with AI-assisted workflows in 2026, Cursor has become a mainstream choice. It understands Laravel conventions well enough to generate useful Eloquent queries, controllers, and service classes.
Zed — Fast, minimal editor with growing PHP support. Zed is significantly faster than VS Code on large codebases. PHP and Laravel support is improving rapidly via extensions. Worth watching if editor performance is a pain point.
3. Local Development Environments
Laravel Sail — Docker-based, official. See first-party tools above. The recommended local environment for new Laravel projects in 2026.
Laravel Herd — Native local environment for Mac and Windows. Herd installs PHP, nginx, and Node.js natively — no Docker overhead. Blazing fast for local development. Herd Pro adds SSL, database management, and multi-site support. The best option for developers who don’t need Docker’s isolation.
Laravel Valet — Lightweight Mac dev environment. Valet uses nginx and dnsmasq to serve your local sites with zero configuration. Simpler than Sail, faster than full Docker. Good for developers who already have PHP installed locally.
DBngin — Local database management. Runs MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Redis locally without Docker. Pairs naturally with Herd or Valet for a fast, Docker-free local stack.
TablePlus — Database GUI client. TablePlus is the most popular GUI for managing MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, and SQLite databases. Clean interface, fast, and available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
4. Starter Kits & Scaffolding
Laravel Breeze — Minimal authentication scaffolding. Breeze provides clean, simple scaffolding for authentication (login, registration, password reset, email verification) with your choice of frontend: Blade, Livewire, Inertia/React, or Inertia/Vue. The right starting point for most new projects.
Laravel Jetstream — Feature-rich application starter. Jetstream builds on Breeze with team management, profile management, two-factor authentication, session management, and optional API support via Sanctum. Use it when you need a full application shell, not just auth.
Laravel Spark — SaaS billing starter kit. Spark adds subscription billing, team billing, and a customer billing portal on top of Jetstream. The fastest path to a production SaaS billing system. Available for Stripe and Paddle.
Livewire Starter Kit (official, 2025) — The new first-party starter kit for Livewire + Volt + Alpine.js. Replaces the old Breeze Livewire option with a more complete, opinionated starting point.
5. Testing Tools
Testing in Laravel in 2026 is better than it has ever been. The ecosystem now covers unit testing, feature testing, browser testing, API testing, and database testing with tools that are a genuine pleasure to use.
Pest — The recommended testing framework. Pest is a testing framework built on top of PHPUnit with an expressive, readable syntax that significantly reduces testing boilerplate. Pest v4 (2026) introduced browser testing powered by Playwright, visual regression testing, and device simulation. For new Laravel projects, Pest is the default.
PHPUnit — The foundation. Pest runs on PHPUnit. For teams with existing PHPUnit test suites, there is no pressure to migrate — PHPUnit remains fully supported and integrated into Laravel’s testing infrastructure.
Laravel Dusk — Browser testing via ChromeDriver. Dusk automates a real Chromium browser for end-to-end testing. Still relevant for projects that haven’t moved to Pest 4’s browser testing. Expressive syntax, deep Laravel integration.
Pest Browser Testing (Playwright) — New in Pest 4. Playwright-powered browser testing with better performance, parallel execution, and device simulation compared to Dusk. For new projects starting in 2026, this is worth evaluating over Dusk.
Paratest — Parallel test execution. Paratest runs your PHPUnit or Pest test suite in parallel across multiple processes, dramatically cutting test execution time on larger suites. Essential for CI/CD pipelines as the test suite grows.
Factory Pattern (built-in) — Eloquent model factories generate realistic test data. Laravel’s factory system with Faker integration is one of the most developer-friendly test data generation systems in any web framework.
Mockery — Mock objects for testing. Built into Laravel’s test suite. Use it for mocking services, external APIs, and dependencies without hitting real infrastructure.
6. Debugging & Profiling
Laravel Debugbar — The most popular debugging toolbar. Debugbar embeds a toolbar at the bottom of your browser window showing queries, request data, route info, views, events, and timing. Essential for spotting N+1 query problems and slow pages during development. Over 20 million downloads.
Clockwork — Browser-based debugger. Clockwork is a cleaner, faster alternative to Debugbar. It surfaces the same performance data in your browser’s developer tools via a dedicated panel (available as Chrome and Firefox extensions) rather than injecting a toolbar into your HTML. Better for API debugging where you don’t have a frontend UI.
Laravel Telescope — See first-party tools. Telescope is the production-ready option that complements Debugbar’s local development focus.
Xdebug — PHP-level step debugger. Xdebug integrates with PhpStorm and VS Code for breakpoint-based debugging — step through code, inspect variable state, set watch expressions. Essential for diagnosing complex logic bugs that profiling tools can’t surface.
Flare — Laravel error tracking in production. Flare is built specifically for Laravel by the Spatie team and provides rich error tracking with full stack traces, request context, query log, and job context in a UI that understands Laravel’s internals better than generic error trackers.
vcian/laravel-code-insights — Codebase exploration dashboard. Code Insights gives you a real-time visual map of your entire Laravel application listing all controllers, models, repositories, traits, and helpers in one browsable interface. For developers onboarding onto a large Laravel codebase or auditing an unfamiliar project, it replaces minutes of directory spelunking with an instant structural overview. Lightweight and dev-environment only.
7. Deployment & Hosting
Laravel Cloud — The newest first-party hosting platform. Laravel Cloud provides managed, auto-scaling hosting for Laravel applications with zero server configuration. Built-in queue workers, scheduled tasks, edge caching, Reverb WebSocket support, and automated deployments from Git. The most complete managed platform for Laravel in 2026 and the recommended starting point for new projects.
Laravel Forge — Server provisioning and management. Forge provisions and configures servers on DigitalOcean, AWS, Linode, Vultr, and others — installing PHP, nginx, MySQL, Redis, queue workers, and SSL certificates automatically. The right choice for teams that want control over their server environment without managing raw infrastructure manually.
Laravel Vapor — Serverless deployment on AWS Lambda. Vapor deploys your Laravel application to AWS Lambda with auto-scaling, zero cold-start optimization, and S3/CloudFront integration. Best for applications with unpredictable traffic spikes. Higher per-request cost than a dedicated server at sustained load.
Laravel Envoyer — Zero-downtime deployments. Envoyer handles deployment pipeline management — zero-downtime releases, health checks, deployment notifications, and rollback. Works with any server. Often paired with Forge for the server layer.
Ploi — Forge alternative with a cleaner UI. Ploi is a popular Forge alternative for server provisioning and management with a simpler interface and lower price point. Supports all major cloud providers.
Deployer — Open-source deployment tool. Deployer is a PHP-based deployment tool with a pre-built Laravel deployment recipe. Free alternative to Envoyer for teams that want to self-host their deployment tooling.
8. Monitoring & Observability
Laravel Pulse — See first-party tools. Free, open-source, Laravel-native. The baseline monitoring solution for every Laravel production application.
Sentry — Error tracking and performance monitoring. The industry-standard error tracker. The Laravel SDK provides deep integration including transaction tracing, breadcrumbs, and queue job monitoring. Use Flare for a Laravel-native experience or Sentry for multi-stack teams with existing Sentry accounts.
Inspector — Laravel-specific APM. Inspector provides real-time application monitoring with segment-level performance tracing — HTTP requests, jobs, database queries, and Redis operations tracked as segments within a single timeline. Built specifically for PHP and Laravel.
Oh Dear — Uptime and SSL monitoring. Oh Dear monitors your sites for uptime, SSL certificate expiry, broken links, scheduled task execution, and performance. Built by the Spatie team with Laravel integration via webhook notifications.
vcian/pulse-mysql-db-auditor — Database auditing card for Laravel Pulse. This Pulse card brings database health monitoring directly into your Pulse dashboard surfacing missing indexes, constraint issues, and database standard violations alongside your other application metrics. Pairs naturally with laravel-db-auditor to give you both one-time audit reports and continuous production visibility in the same ecosystem.
9. Frontend Stack
Laravel supports multiple frontend approaches. Here are the tools for each:
Livewire — Full-stack reactive components in PHP. Livewire lets you build dynamic, reactive UI components entirely in PHP without writing JavaScript. Combined with Alpine.js for client-side interactions, the Livewire stack is the most popular choice for Laravel developers who want to stay in PHP. Version 3 is a significant upgrade with improved architecture and performance.
Alpine.js — Minimal JavaScript for Livewire apps. Alpine is a lightweight JavaScript framework (like Vue.js but much smaller) that complements Livewire for client-side interactivity — dropdowns, modals, tabs — without a full JavaScript build pipeline.
Inertia.js — Bridge between Laravel and React/Vue. Inertia lets you build single-page applications using React or Vue on the frontend while keeping Laravel as your backend — without building a separate API. You write controllers and routes in Laravel as normal; Inertia handles the client-side navigation.
Vite — Asset bundling. Vite is the default build tool for Laravel applications (replacing Mix since Laravel 9). Fast hot module replacement, native ES modules, and a Laravel plugin that integrates seamlessly with Blade and Inertia.
Tailwind CSS — Utility-first CSS. Tailwind is the standard CSS framework in the Laravel community. Pre-installed in all official Laravel starter kits.
10. Essential Community Packages
The community package ecosystem is where the Laravel experience truly separates itself from other frameworks. These are the packages that appear in virtually every serious Laravel project.
spatie/laravel-permission — Role and permission management. The most widely used access control package in the Laravel ecosystem. Assign roles to users, define permissions, check access via Gates — all with a clean, expressive API. Downloaded over 30 million times.
spatie/laravel-medialibrary — File and media management. Associates media files with Eloquent models, handles S3/cloud storage, generates image conversions (thumbnails, WebP, etc.), and provides a clean API for file uploads. The standard solution for file management in Laravel.
spatie/laravel-activitylog — Audit trail and activity logging. Automatically logs model changes (created, updated, deleted) with before/after values. One-line model trait to enable audit logging on any Eloquent model. Essential for compliance and debugging.
spatie/laravel-backup — Application backup. Automated backups of your database and files to local disk, S3, Dropbox, FTP, or any Flysystem driver. Includes backup health monitoring and notification alerts. Every production application should have this running.
spatie/laravel-query-builder — API query building from request parameters. Transforms URL query parameters (filters, sorts, includes) into Eloquent queries with security and validation built in. Eliminates repetitive query-building code in API controllers.
spatie/laravel-data — Structured data objects. Create strongly-typed data objects with automatic validation, casting, and transformation. The modern replacement for plain arrays and DTOs in Laravel applications.
spatie/laravel-sluggable — Auto-generating slugs from model attributes. One trait to add slug generation to any Eloquent model with uniqueness handling.
barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper — IDE autocompletion for Laravel. Generates PHPDoc comment blocks for Facades, Eloquent model properties, and factory methods. Essential for accurate PhpStorm and VS Code autocompletion in Laravel projects.
laravel/excel (Maatwebsite) — Excel and CSV import/export. The standard package for reading and writing Excel files in Laravel. Supports streaming large exports, chunked imports, events, and queue-based processing. Clean API built on top of PhpSpreadsheet.
intervention/image — Image manipulation. Resize, crop, watermark, convert image formats. The standard image processing library for Laravel. Version 3 supports GD and Imagick drivers.
nWidart/laravel-modules — Modular application architecture. Organizes large Laravel applications into self-contained modules — each module has its own routes, controllers, models, migrations, and config. Essential tooling for the modular monolith pattern.
11. Authentication & Authorization
Laravel Fortify — Authentication backend. Fortify handles the backend for registration, login, two-factor authentication, and password reset without any frontend opinions. Use it as the auth backbone when building custom UIs.
silber/bouncer — Alternative RBAC. Bouncer offers a different approach to roles and permissions with a more relational model. Useful when permission structures are more complex than standard role-based access.
Laravel Socialite — See first-party tools. Social OAuth authentication.
vcian/laravel-ip-gateway — Route-level IP access control. IP Gateway lets you whitelist or blacklist IP addresses at the route level blocking specific IPs from accessing your application or restricting sensitive routes to known IP ranges only. Essential for admin panels, internal tools, or API endpoints that should only be accessible from specific networks or office IPs. Zero-config integration via middleware.
12. Database, ORM & Migrations
Eloquent ORM — Laravel’s built-in ORM. Active Record implementation with expressive query builder, relationships (hasOne, hasMany, belongsToMany, morphTo, etc.), casting, scopes, and observers. The most developer-friendly ORM in PHP.
laravel-query-detective — N+1 query detector. Detects N+1 query problems in development by monitoring Eloquent relationships. Logs warnings when the same query is executed more than a threshold number of times.
Laravel Schema — Migration and schema builder. First-party. Define database structure in PHP with rollback support, column type abstraction, and index management. The standard way to manage database schema in Laravel.
staudenmeir/eloquent-has-many-deep — Deep nested Eloquent relationships. Adds hasManyDeep and hasManyThrough for complex multi-level relationships that Eloquent doesn’t support natively.
calebporzio/sushi — Eloquent models backed by arrays. Useful for small, static datasets that you want to query with Eloquent syntax without a database table.
spatie/laravel-database-notifications — Real-time database-driven notification channel.
vcian/laravel-db-auditor — Database constraint and index auditor. The Vcian team’s open-source package that audits your database for missing indexes, foreign key constraints, and best practices surfacing structural issues before they become performance problems in production.
vcian/laravel-data-bringin — Dynamic CSV import with column mapping. Data BringIn provides a clean interface for importing CSV files into your Laravel MySQL database with dynamic column mapping users can match CSV columns to database columns at import time without code changes. Handles validation, column mismatches, and partial imports. Useful for admin panels, client data onboarding, and any workflow where external CSV data needs to land in your database reliably.
13. Queue & Job Management
Laravel Horizon — See first-party tools. The essential queue management layer for Redis queues.
spatie/laravel-queue-monitor — Queue monitoring for non-Redis drivers. Monitors queue job execution duration, status, output and stores results in the database. Alternative to Horizon for teams not using Redis.
laravel/scout — See first-party tools. Scout’s indexing operations run as queued jobs.
spatie/laravel-model-cleanup — Automated model record cleanup. Schedule cleanup of old Eloquent records via a clean API with configurable retention policies.
14. AI & LLM Integration
This is the fastest-moving category in the Laravel ecosystem in 2026.
Prism — Unified LLM integration for Laravel. Prism provides a single, expressive API for working with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Ollama, and other LLM providers. Switch providers without changing your application code. Supports tool use, streaming, structured output, and multi-step agent workflows. The Laravel-native way to add AI capabilities. Now officially endorsed by the Laravel team.
openai-php/laravel — OpenAI API wrapper. A Laravel service provider wrapping the official OpenAI PHP client. Use it for direct OpenAI API access when you don’t need the provider-agnostic abstraction of Prism.
Laravel Boost — AI-assisted code generation from the Laravel team. Boost is the official Laravel AI coding tool that understands Laravel conventions deeply and generates code that fits naturally into the Laravel ecosystem. Different from generic AI code tools — it knows Eloquent, Artisan, and the full first-party package surface.
LaraCopilot — Full-stack AI app builder for Laravel. LaraCopilot takes AI assistance a step further — instead of completing code snippets, it builds complete Laravel applications from natural language descriptions. Generates production-ready Laravel code with proper architecture, relationships, authentication, and API endpoints. The tool for teams who want to prototype or build features at a speed that traditional development can’t match. Add AI to Your Stack →
15. Admin Panels & Back-Office
Filament — The Laravel admin framework. Filament is an open-source collection of beautiful full-stack components for building admin panels, dashboards, and internal tools in Laravel. Powered by Livewire and Alpine.js. Version 3 is a complete rebuild with a plugin ecosystem that rivals commercial alternatives. The community standard for Laravel admin panels in 2026.
Laravel Nova — The official paid admin panel. Nova is the first-party premium admin panel with a polished UI, resource management, metrics, actions, filters, and lenses. Actively maintained by the Laravel team. Worth the license cost for teams that want long-term first-party support.
Backpack for Laravel — Feature-rich CRUD admin framework. Backpack provides a comprehensive suite of CRUD operations, field types, columns, and filters. Popular in Eastern European Laravel communities. The free tier covers most use cases; Pro extends it significantly.
Orchid — RAD platform for back-office applications. Orchid focuses on building complex internal tools and back-office systems. Different philosophy from Filament/Nova — more component-based, less CRUD-focused.
16. API Development & Documentation
Laravel API Resources — Built-in API transformation layer. Transform Eloquent models into JSON responses with conditional attributes, relationships, and metadata. The right first tool before reaching for a dedicated serialisation package.
spatie/laravel-query-builder — See community packages. Adds filter, sort, and include capabilities to APIs from URL parameters.
Scramble — Automatic API documentation. Scramble generates OpenAPI (Swagger) documentation from your Laravel routes and request/response types automatically — no manual annotation required. The most developer-friendly API documentation solution for Laravel.
knuckleswtf/scribe — API documentation generator. Scribe generates beautiful API docs from your Laravel routes with annotations and response examples. Alternative to Scramble with a more annotation-heavy approach.
Laravel Sanctum / Passport — See first-party tools. API authentication.
17. Code Quality & Standards
Laravel Pint — See first-party tools. Zero-configuration PHP CS Fixer for Laravel code style.
PHPStan / Larastan — Static analysis. PHPStan is the leading PHP static analyser; Larastan extends it with deep Laravel-specific rules (understanding Eloquent relationships, Facades, and magic methods). Running Larastan at Level 5+ in CI catches type errors before they reach production.
Rector — Automated code refactoring. Rector automatically upgrades PHP and Laravel code — handling deprecation fixes, code modernisation, and structural refactoring. Essential for major version upgrades.
PHP CS Fixer — Code style enforcement. The underlying tool that Pint wraps. Useful for teams that want custom code style rules beyond Pint’s defaults.
SonarQube — Code quality and security scanning. Enterprise-grade static analysis with security vulnerability detection, code smell identification, and technical debt tracking. More setup than Larastan but covers security patterns that static type analysis misses.
18. Media, Files & Storage
spatie/laravel-medialibrary — See community packages. The standard media management package.
League/Flysystem (via Laravel Storage) — Filesystem abstraction. Laravel’s Storage facade is built on Flysystem, providing a unified API for local disk, Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, FTP, and more. First-party integration.
spatie/image — Image manipulation. Clean image processing API used under the hood by laravel-medialibrary. Supports GD, Imagick, and FFMpeg for video thumbnails.
Intervention Image — See community packages.
cloudinary/cloudinary-laravel — Cloudinary integration. For teams using Cloudinary for CDN-hosted, transformed media. Auto-optimised WebP delivery, intelligent cropping, and video transformation.
19. Notifications & Communication
Laravel Notifications — Built-in multi-channel notifications. Send notifications via mail, SMS, Slack, database, and broadcast channels from a single notification class. First-party, built into the framework.
Laravel Mail — Built-in mailer. Symfony Mailer integration with Mailable classes, Blade email templates, and queue support. Drivers for SMTP, Mailgun, Postmark, Amazon SES, SendGrid, and Resend.
Resend — Modern email delivery for Laravel. Resend is the developer-first email API rapidly adopted in the Laravel community. First-class Laravel integration with official Laravel driver support.
Beyond Code: Mailcoach — Self-hosted email marketing. Full email list management, campaigns, sequences, and analytics — self-hosted on your own infrastructure. The Laravel community’s alternative to Mailchimp/ConvertKit for developers who want control.
laravel-notification-channels/ — Community notification channels. The laravel-notification-channels organisation maintains community-built notification drivers for Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Twilio, PagerDuty, and dozens more.
20. LaraCopilot Layer
The tools listed throughout this directory solve specific, narrow problems. You still need to stitch them together architecting the application structure, writing the business logic, building the features, setting up the relationships.
That’s where LaraCopilot fits.
LaraCopilot is the only AI app builder in the ecosystem that generates native Laravel code not generic PHP, not JavaScript, not a drag-and-drop interface. Describe what you want to build in plain language and get production-ready Laravel output: Eloquent models with correct relationships, Artisan commands, service classes, queue jobs, API endpoints with Sanctum auth, Livewire or Inertia components, and Blade templates.
The tools in this directory are still what runs your application. LaraCopilot is how you build it faster.
Quick Reference: Tool by Use Case
| Need | Tool |
|---|---|
| Queue monitoring | Laravel Horizon |
| Error tracking (dev) | Laravel Telescope + Debugbar |
| Error tracking (prod) | Flare or Sentry |
| Performance monitoring | Laravel Pulse + Nightwatch |
| Local development | Laravel Herd or Sail |
| Browser testing | Pest 4 or Laravel Dusk |
| Feature flags | Laravel Pennant |
| File uploads | Spatie Media Library |
| Admin panel | Filament (free) or Nova (paid) |
| Role-based access | Spatie Permission |
| Audit logging | Spatie Activitylog |
| Application backup | Spatie Backup |
| AI integration | Prism + LaraCopilot |
| API documentation | Scramble |
| Static analysis | Larastan |
| Code style | Laravel Pint |
| Deployment managed | Laravel Cloud |
| Deployment self-hosted | Forge + Envoyer |
| WebSockets | Laravel Reverb |
| Billing | Laravel Cashier |
| Full-text search | Laravel Scout + Meilisearch |
How to Think About Ecosystem
The Laravel ecosystem is not a list of tools to install, it’s a set of layers to understand.
The framework provides the foundation. The first-party tools (Horizon, Telescope, Pulse, Reverb, Octane, Pennant) extend it with capabilities the core deliberately doesn’t bundle. The community packages (Spatie above all) fill specific gaps that the first-party suite doesn’t cover. The third-party tools (IDEs, deployment platforms, monitoring services) wrap the whole thing in workflow.
The teams that build the best Laravel applications don’t use every tool here. They use the right subset for their context and they know this list well enough to pick correctly.
This directory is maintained with that intention: not to tell you to install everything, but to make sure that when you have a specific problem, you know the right tool exists.