✅ What Still Makes Laravel Great?

• Laravel still has one of the best developer experiences in the PHP world.
• The framework is well-documented and supported by a large, active community.
• It offers great tooling like Artisan, Eloquent ORM, Blade, and queues out of the box.
• The ecosystem is rich: Nova, Forge, Vapor, Jetstream all offer value if you need them.

So there’s no question – Laravel has achieved a lot. But there are also a few areas where I’ve noticed changes that made me stop and think.

🤔 What Makes Me Feel Unsure About Laravel’s Direction?

• It feels like Laravel is slowly moving from being a clean, open framework to a kind of platform ecosystem – one that’s increasingly tied to paid tools.
• Tools like Jetstream or Breeze used to feel like a jump-start. Now, they seem more like minimal wrappers, often pushing devs toward paid services or third-party integrations.
• Authentication is no longer a simple built-in solution – it’s become dependent on external apps or services, which sometimes feel out of my control.
• For someone who values independence and self-hosting, this shift away from clean, open defaults makes me wonder about long-term sustainability.

These aren’t deal breakers – they’re just thoughts I’m having while looking at what I want for the future of my projects.

💸 Is There a Risk for Projects with High Investment?

I also wonder about businesses that have invested a lot into Laravel. If the core tools and integrations keep evolving in this direction, could it become hard (or expensive) to maintain those platforms over time?

I’m not saying Laravel will be abandoned – not at all. But if it’s slowly transforming into something that relies on commercial services or external vendors, we might eventually face vendor lock-in or unsupported functionality.

It’s just something I believe developers should be aware of – especially those working on large or long-term platforms.

🔮 So… What Comes Next?

I don’t have all the answers. Maybe Laravel continues evolving and surprises us all. Maybe new frameworks take over. Maybe the full-stack JavaScript ecosystem (like Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit) becomes the new normal.

All I know is – it’s okay to stop, look around, and ask:

“Is the tool I’m using still aligned with what I believe in?”