Deploy Laravel to Google Cloud With Laravel GCP Hosting on Compute Engine and Zero Downtime Releases

How do I deploy a Laravel app to Google Cloud?

You have three realistic routes: a Compute Engine VM, Cloud Run, or App Engine. A Compute Engine VM is a normal Linux server, so Laravel runs on it exactly as the framework documentation describes, with Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, Redis and Supervisor on one machine. Cloud Run runs your app as a container that Google starts and stops for you. App Engine is the older managed runtime and most current guides have moved on from it.

For an app with a queue, a scheduler, file uploads and a database, the VM is the shortest path. You create the machine, install the stack (by hand, with a script, or with a panel) and deploy from git. Cloud Run suits a stateless API with uneven traffic, because request based billing charges nothing while no request is being handled. The moment the app needs an always on worker, a database and Redis, each of those becomes a separate Google product with its own line on the bill.

If you are deciding between clouds rather than routes, the same reasoning is laid out for Amazon on the deploy Laravel to AWS EC2 page.

How much does it cost to host Laravel on Google Cloud?

A production Laravel app on a single Compute Engine VM costs about $19 to $33 a month before traffic, depending on memory. These are Google's on demand prices for Iowa (us-central1), multiplied by 730 hours, read in October 2026.

Two lines catch people who arrive from DigitalOcean or Linode. The first is traffic. Those providers include 2 TB to 4 TB of transfer with a small server, while Google charges $0.12 for every gigabyte after the first on its default Premium network tier, so 1 TB of outbound traffic adds about $123. Setting the VM to the Standard network tier brings that to roughly $70, with the first 200 GB not charged. The second is the IPv4 address, billed at $3.65 a month on every VM that has one.

A commitment lowers the machine price a good deal: the same e2-medium is $15.41 a month on a one year resource commitment and $11.01 on a three year one. Here is what four common setups add up to, with the panel fee on top. Traffic is priced on the Premium tier.

DeployManage is the most expensive column in every row and the table shows it on purpose. Paying yearly halves our fee ($29, $64 or $149 a month), which brings the last row to $188.28, still above Forge and Ploi. Starter deploys from the panel without release folders, and atomic releases with push to deploy start on Growth at $129. What the extra money buys is seats for the team, an activity log and one panel across every provider you use. If you are one developer with one VM, Forge at $12 or Ploi at $10 is the sensible purchase. For a wider look at server budgets, see what a Laravel VPS costs.

Can Laravel run on Google Cloud Run?

Yes, Laravel runs on Cloud Run as a container, and for a steady production app it usually costs more than a VM. Cloud Run bills per second of CPU and memory. With instance based billing, one always on web container with 1 vCPU and 1 GB comes to $47.34 a month in Iowa after the monthly allowance. Queue workers need a worker pool, another $27.57 for 1 vCPU and 1 GB. The database cannot live in the container, so add Cloud SQL from $25.55 plus storage. That is about $102 a month before traffic and before a Redis instance, against $33.11 for an e2-medium VM with 4 GB that runs all of it.

Cloud Run wins when the app is idle most of the day. With request based billing an instance costs nothing while it is not handling a request, and the monthly allowance covers 180,000 vCPU seconds and 2 million requests. An internal tool or a webhook receiver can run for close to nothing.

There are also working differences to plan for. A Cloud Run container has no SSH, and files written to its local disk are held in memory and disappear when the instance stops, so uploads must go to Cloud Storage. Sessions and cache need a shared store. Migrations run as a separate job. None of that is hard, but it is a different way to operate Laravel, and queue workers under Supervisor on a VM need no redesign at all.

Does Laravel Forge work with Google Cloud?

Laravel Forge does not create servers on Google Cloud. Its supported providers are Laravel VPS, DigitalOcean, Akamai (Linode), Vultr, AWS and Hetzner Cloud. A Compute Engine VM can still be added through Forge's Custom VPS option, which Forge says receives the same functionality as the built in providers.

The Custom VPS requirements are specific: a fresh installation of Ubuntu 24.04 or 26.04, reachable from the internet, with root SSH access enabled. Google's Ubuntu images sign you in as a normal user with sudo and keep direct root login over SSH switched off, so you have to enable it on the VM before Forge can provision. Ploi adds a Compute Engine VM as a custom server in a similar way.

DeployManage handles Google Cloud the same way it handles AWS, Vultr and Linode: you run one install command in a root shell on the VM (sudo -i from the console's SSH window is enough) and the panel takes over from there. Forge is cheaper, and on a single VM its native zero downtime deploys do the job. The differences that matter are seats, the activity log and the yearly price, covered on the Laravel Forge alternative page.

Which Google Cloud machine type is best for Laravel?

Start with an e2-medium (4 GB) for a production app that runs MySQL, Redis and Horizon on the same VM. It costs $24.46 a month on demand. An e2-small with 2 GB at $12.23 is enough for a small app or a staging server, but MySQL, PHP-FPM, Redis and a couple of queue workers leave little headroom during a composer install or an asset build.

E2 small and medium machines are shared core types. They give you two vCPUs that can burst, with sustained use limited to a fraction of a core on the micro and small sizes. When the app is CPU bound all day, move to an e2-standard-2 with 2 full vCPUs and 8 GB at $48.92. The e2-micro at $6.11 is fine for a queue only box or a scheduler, not for a full stack.

Use a balanced persistent disk rather than a standard one for the database, and size it for a year of growth: 50 GB is $5 a month. For the region, us-central1 (Iowa) and us-east1 (South Carolina) are among Google's lowest priced US regions. Pick the one closest to your users or to the BigQuery dataset the app reads.

Is Google Cloud good for Laravel hosting?

Google Cloud is a solid place to run Laravel when you have a reason to be there, and a pricey one when you do not. The reasons that hold up are credits, an existing commitment, data that already lives in BigQuery or Cloud Storage, or a customer requirement. Compute Engine itself is reliable, bills per second and has regions across the US.

Without one of those reasons, a 4 GB server at DigitalOcean or Linode is $24 with 4 TB of transfer included, and the equivalent e2-medium is $33.11 before any traffic. A team choosing freely usually spends less at a simpler provider. The comparison for the common choices is on the Laravel on DigitalOcean and deploy Laravel to Hetzner pages.

Either way the Laravel side is identical. The same panel, the same deploy script and the same atomic release folders work on any Ubuntu server, which keeps the choice of cloud reversible.