Laravel Forge vs RunCloud: Which Server Panel Fits Your Stack?

Pick Laravel Forge if your team lives in Laravel and wants the first party panel maintained by the people who build the framework. Pick RunCloud if you manage a mix of PHP sites, especially WordPress, across servers you already own, and you want tooling shaped around that job. Both are server management panels: they connect to your cloud account over SSH, provision a hardened production server, and replace hand written Nginx configs with a deploy button. Neither one hosts anything, so you keep paying DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or AWS directly. The real differences are stack focus, WordPress tooling, how deployments behave, and price. One of those, price, I can only half answer, and I will explain why rather than make a number up.

What is the difference between Laravel Forge and RunCloud?

The core difference is focus: Forge is the official Laravel panel, built by the Laravel team and tuned for shipping Laravel and PHP applications from Git with zero downtime, while RunCloud is an independent PHP server management panel that leans hard into WordPress and general PHP hosting across any VPS you can reach over SSH. Forge assumes you are a developer deploying an application you wrote. RunCloud assumes you might also be an agency running dozens of sites for clients, a good share of them WordPress. Both provision Nginx, PHP, MySQL, and SSL, and both deploy from Git. The assumptions underneath are what diverge.

Two notes on that table. First, full disclosure: we build DeployManage, which competes with both of these, so read this with that in mind. Second, the pricing cell is deliberately vague. RunCloud's pricing page renders through JavaScript and third party figures contradict each other, so I am not going to publish a number I cannot verify. RunCloud does publish tiered plans, from a single server entry tier up through team and business tiers. Get the current figures from runcloud.io/pricing rather than from any blog post, including this one.

Cloud providers and provisioning

Both panels are provider neutral in the way that matters: you bring your own server, they configure it. Forge connects to DigitalOcean, AWS, Hetzner, and other major hosts, and it can adopt a custom server over SSH. Its standout is Laravel VPS, a one click instant provisioning option that gets you a running Laravel server without touching a cloud console at all. RunCloud takes the pure SSH approach: point it at any VPS, from DigitalOcean or Vultr or Linode or a box in a closet, and it takes over. If you already own servers, that flexibility is worth something. If Ploi is also on your shortlist, our Laravel Forge vs Ploi comparison covers provider breadth in more depth.

Deployments and zero downtime releases

This is Forge's clearest win. Zero downtime deployments are now included in new Forge subscriptions: the old Envoyer functionality was folded into the product, so you no longer buy a second tool to avoid a broken page mid deploy. Two caveats worth knowing. Envoyer is still maintained as a separate product, and Forge's built in zero downtime deploy covers a single server, whereas Envoyer could push one project out to multiple servers. If you run a fleet behind a load balancer, that distinction matters. RunCloud handles deployments through Git integration and deployment scripts, which is fine for WordPress and for most PHP sites, but atomic releases are not the drum it beats. If shipping several times a day without dropping requests is the point of the exercise, verify RunCloud's current deploy behavior against their docs before you commit.

WordPress and mixed PHP hosting

Here RunCloud takes the round. It was built for people running a lot of PHP, and WordPress is treated as a first class citizen rather than a checkbox: dedicated WordPress tooling, multiple PHP versions per server, security hardening, staging, and backups. Agencies with fifty client sites, half WordPress and half bespoke PHP, are exactly who RunCloud is for, and it has a long track record with that crowd. Forge does support WordPress, along with Statamic, Node, Nuxt, and Next, but it treats those as additional site types on a panel whose center of gravity is a Laravel app. Both will run the sites. The question is whether the daily workflow assumes an app or a portfolio of sites.

Monitoring, staging, and team access

Forge gives you server monitoring and health checks on the panel, along with organizations, teams, and role based access, which suits an engineering team where several people need to touch production with different permission levels. RunCloud provides server monitoring, staging environments, backups, and security hardening, with team and business tiers for shops that need more than one seat. Both are enough for a small team. Neither panel thinks for you at 3am, though, and no panel replaces someone who actually understands Linux. Plenty of agencies solve that by running one of these tools day to day and paying to bring in a freelance DevOps engineer for the gnarly weeks, which costs a fraction of a full time hire.

What each one costs

Forge uses flat rate pricing on top of your cloud bill: Hobby at $12 per month (unlimited Laravel VPS servers plus one external server), Growth at $19 per month with unlimited servers, and Business at $39 per month with advanced support. There is no free plan, so you pay from day one. RunCloud publishes tiered plans running from a single server entry tier up to team and business options; read the current numbers off runcloud.io/pricing. Whatever either one costs, the panel fee is the small line item. The VPS, the backups, and the hours your team spends on infrastructure are the real spend, and the point of buying a panel is to shrink that third number.

Is RunCloud better than Laravel Forge?

For WordPress work and mixed PHP hosting, yes, RunCloud is usually the better tool, because it has the WordPress tooling, staging, hardening, and multi site workflow that Forge treats as secondary. For Laravel product teams, no: Forge is better, because it is first party, tracks new framework releases closely, includes zero downtime deploys, and provisions instantly. Neither is objectively superior. They are pointed at different problems, and the honest test is whether your servers hold one app or fifty sites.

Is Laravel Forge worth it?

For most Laravel and PHP teams, yes: at $12 to $39 per month on top of a VPS you already rent, Forge pays for itself the first time it saves you an afternoon of Nginx debugging, and it now bundles zero downtime deploys that used to be a separate purchase. The support is first party, so when Laravel ships something new, the panel already knows about it. The reasons to look elsewhere are specific: you want a free tier to start, you run mostly WordPress, or you need to deploy one project across multiple servers, which Forge's built in zero downtime deploy does not do on its own.

Can RunCloud host Laravel apps?

Yes, RunCloud runs Laravel perfectly well: it provisions Nginx, PHP, and MySQL, supports multiple PHP versions, handles Git deployments and deployment scripts, and covers queues, cron, and SSL, which is everything a standard Laravel app needs in production. The gap is not capability, it is affinity. Forge is built by the framework team and its defaults match Laravel conventions out of the box, so there is less to configure and less to think about. RunCloud will host your Laravel app; it just was not designed around it.

Do I need Forge if I use Laravel?

No, Forge is not required: Laravel runs on any correctly configured Linux server, and you can deploy it with plain SSH, Deployer, Ansible, Docker, a CI pipeline, or a competing panel. What Forge buys you is time and a known good configuration, which is why so many teams pay for it. The calculation is simple. If configuring and maintaining servers is something you enjoy and have time for, skip it. If every hour on infrastructure is an hour not spent on the product, a panel of some kind is worth the monthly fee, and Forge is the safest default for Laravel specifically.

A third option worth a look

Since we build it, I will be brief. DeployManage provisions hardened servers on Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS, Vultr, Linode, OVHcloud, and custom VPS, with zero downtime atomic deploys that include health checks and instant rollback, managed MySQL and PostgreSQL, mailboxes per domain, SSL, firewall, queues, scheduled jobs, reusable provisioning recipes, and a fleet wide audit log. There is a free plan to start. It is worth comparing if provider breadth or rollback safety is what you are missing: see the Laravel Forge alternative and RunCloud alternative breakdowns for the detail.

Which one should you choose

Laravel product teams and SaaS shops: choose Forge. You get first party support, instant provisioning, and zero downtime deploys in the subscription, and the ecosystem fit removes small frictions you would otherwise pay for in time. WordPress agencies and hosting shops: choose RunCloud. The WordPress tooling, staging, hardening, and multi site management are why the product exists, and Forge will feel like the wrong shape once you are past a handful of client sites. Mixed shops running a couple of Laravel apps alongside WordPress client work: pick the panel that matches whichever side of the business is growing, or run both if the budget allows. Solo developers with one app and no budget: start on a free tier somewhere and upgrade when the pain is real. Teams deploying one project to several servers behind a load balancer: check that whatever you pick handles multi server releases, because Forge's included zero downtime deploy targets a single server, and that is the constraint people find out about too late.