Laravel Forge vs Cleavr
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Laravel Forge and Cleavr.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Laravel Forge
0 reviews
3.8/5
Cleavr
0 reviews
Laravel Forge is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.8). Laravel Forge provisions and manages PHP servers for Laravel applications. Auto-deploys from GitHub, manages Nginx, databases, SSL, and cron jobs. The standard for Laravel deployments. Cleavr is a server management and deployment tool for deploying Laravel, Node.js, and static sites to your own VPS. Manages Nginx, databases, SSL, and deployments through a UI.
Laravel Forge Server management for PHP/Laravel deployments | Cleavr Deploy Laravel and Node.js apps via UI | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.8 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | From $12/mo | From $5.5/mo✓ |
| Best for | Laravel and PHP developers — and agencies running multiple client servers — who want automated provisioning and deployment to any cloud VPS while keeping root access and provider choice | Solo developers and small teams running PHP, Laravel, WordPress, or Node apps who want Forge-style deployment workflows on their own VPS at half the price |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optionapi access | managed option |
| Visit Laravel Forge → | Visit Cleavr → | |
Laravel Forge
Pros
- + Flat, published pricing ($12/$19/$39) on top of cheap self-chosen servers — strong cost control versus PaaS
- + Zero-downtime deployments, automated SSL, managed databases, queues, cron, monitoring and heartbeats in the box
- + Provider flexibility: Laravel VPS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, Hetzner Cloud, or bring your own server
- + A decade of Laravel deployments behind it; backed by Laravel Holdings with a $57M Series A and active development
- + Agency-friendly: organizations with role-based access and billing separation, unlimited sites and deployments
Cons
- - Monthly fee on top of server costs — poor value for a single small site
- - PHP-first; Node/Nuxt/Next.js support is newer and broader language support is still promised
- - No uptime SLA and community-only support on the Hobby plan
- - Power tool: provisioning existing servers can cause data loss; backups and OS security are your responsibility
- - Reliability of the running app depends on the underlying provider Forge does not control
Cleavr
Pros
- + Cheap and honest: Lite $5.50/mo for one server with unlimited apps, Pro $15/mo for unlimited servers with backups and monitoring
- + Production deployment features — zero-downtime releases, rollback, canary with health checks, push-to-deploy
- + Works with all the usual VPS providers plus a custom BYO-server connector; servers remain fully yours
- + Complete stack management from the UI: Nginx/PHP, MySQL/PostgreSQL/MariaDB, SSL, Fail2Ban/UFW, cron, PM2
- + Real free trial (5 days, Pro features, no card) and 7-day refunds; 50% discounts for students and non-profits
Cons
- - Bootstrapped two-person company with no published uptime SLA and email-only support
- - API access is locked to trial and Business ($30/mo); team features are Business-only
- - Agent plus panel components reportedly consume ~200-500 MB RAM on each managed server
- - Published prices are yearly-billing rates; the monthly-billing rate is not shown on the pricing page
- - Younger areas (Next.js, newer app types) are thinner than the mature Laravel/PHP core
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