One senior engineer owns both sides. Laravel API on AWS, Next.js on Vercel, one auth flow. Imohub ships this exact pattern.
- Scope
- Ship
- Iterate
monthly subscription
Who this is for
Funded startups that need Laravel as the backend API and Next.js as the public-facing frontend. You want Laravel's depth — Eloquent, queues, Sanctum, granular business logic — alongside Next.js App Router for SEO, RSC, and fast page loads. The concern is coordination: two stacks usually mean two sets of problems, two deploys, two people blaming each other when production breaks. I've built and maintained this architecture; I own both sides.
The pain today
- Two stacks usually mean two repos, two deploy pipelines, and two sets of devs who barely talk.
- Auth across Laravel and Next.js breaks in production because nobody truly owns the boundary.
- CORS between Vercel and your Laravel API blows up on the first mobile or third-party customer.
- Caching across Vercel CDN, Next.js ISR, and Laravel has three layers nobody owns.
- Agencies quote this as two separate projects. One senior engineer ships it as one.
The outcome you get
- One engineer shipping both Laravel and Next.js from day one.
- Single auth flow using Sanctum tokens validated server-side on every Next.js route.
- CORS configured once and correctly — Vercel, mobile customers, and third-party integrations included.
- Three-layer cache (Vercel CDN, ISR revalidation, Laravel cache tags) with a coherent invalidation strategy.
- One deploy plan covering both stacks, sourced from a shared secrets manager.
Reference architecture
Laravel API lives on AWS ECS Fargate behind an Application Load Balancer, with RDS Postgres, Elasticache Redis, and S3 plus CloudFront for file storage and delivery. Next.js frontend lives on Vercel using App Router, React Server Components, the metadata API for SEO, and middleware for auth.
Authentication: Laravel Sanctum issues tokens. Next.js middleware validates on every server-rendered request. Token refresh hits a /api/auth/refresh route that proxies to Laravel, so no token ever touches client-side JavaScript. Cookie-based Sanctum with httpOnly cookies is the alternative for same-domain setups — both patterns are documented and tested.
CORS: the Laravel API allows the Vercel origin explicitly, plus any mobile or third-party clients that need access. Getting this wrong in production is the single most common Laravel + Next.js pain point I see. One config file, one place to update.
Caching: Vercel CDN handles public static pages. ISR handles content that updates hourly or less. On-demand revalidation via Laravel webhooks handles anything that must stay fresh after a mutation. Laravel cache tags handle per-tenant invalidation server-side.
Infrastructure as code: Pulumi stacks for the AWS side, Vercel project config for the frontend, environment variables sourced from a shared secrets manager so neither stack holds values the other doesn't know about.
One engineer shipping both Laravel and Next.js from day one.
Imohub — this architecture in production
Imohub runs Next.js, Laravel, MongoDB, Meilisearch, and AWS in production. 120k+ properties indexed, sub-0.5-second search queries, top-3 Google rankings, and roughly 70% infrastructure cost reduction compared to the prior stack. I shipped both the Laravel backend and the Next.js frontend as the same engineer.
The SEO results are worth examining: clean URLs, structured data, and the metadata API were designed into the Next.js side before the first property went live. That is why the rankings happened — not as an afterthought. The same approach applies to every Laravel + Next.js project I take on.
120k+: Properties indexed and searchable.
When this stack is and isn't the right call
This combination makes sense when SEO traffic is part of the business model, when you expect a mobile app to hit the same Laravel API eventually, or when the frontend and backend need independent release cycles.
It adds roughly 20% more complexity compared to a single-stack deployment like Laravel with Inertia or a Next.js app with route handlers as the backend. That overhead is worth it for content-heavy SaaS products, marketplaces, or anything where a React Native or Flutter mobile customer is on the roadmap. It is not worth it for a quick internal tool or a dashboard-only app with no public SEO surface.
Inertia is the right call if SEO is not on the table and you want one deploy. Pure Next.js with route handlers works when the backend logic is lightweight. Laravel plus Next.js is the answer when you genuinely need both.
Multi-tenancy and mobile-ready API
Multi-tenant SaaS on this stack follows a standard pattern: Laravel handles tenant resolution at the middleware level, scoping Eloquent queries and Redis cache tags per tenant. Next.js gets a tenant-aware token from Sanctum and renders the correct workspace. Adding a second frontend — a mobile app, an admin panel, a partner portal — costs less work because the Laravel API is already decoupled.
For teams planning a React Native or Flutter customer alongside the web app, this is the architectural decision to make at the start, not six months in. Retrofitting a token-based API onto a server-rendered Laravel app mid-project is far more expensive than building it this way from day one.
Timeline and scope
Discovery takes one week. A landing page plus auth plus one core feature ships in four to six weeks. A mid-size SaaS with multi-tenancy, payments, and core CRUD lands in ten to fourteen weeks.
For reference: I shipped the GigEasy MVP in three weeks — Laravel, React, AWS, the full stack — against a typical ten-week agency cycle. Laravel plus Next.js takes a bit longer than a pure Laravel build because of the split deploy, but for products that need both backend depth and frontend SEO performance, the tradeoff is worth it.
Engagement terms
Applications subscription at $4,999 per month. Two to four day delivery cycles. Daily async updates. Weekly thirty-minute call. Fourteen-day money-back guarantee — full refund if you are not happy in the first two weeks. Cancel anytime after that. Work Made for Hire on both the Laravel and Next.js codebases.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rebuilt a real estate portal at a fraction of the cost
Rebuilt Imóveis SC's real estate portal as ImoHub, a faster, more scalable successor, handling 120k+ properties with sub-second search and drastically reduced AWS costs.
Read the case studyFrequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
Inertia is a good choice when SEO is not critical and you want a single deploy with one repo. Laravel plus Next.js makes sense when you need Next.js App Router's SEO capabilities — server-side metadata, static generation, ISR — or when a mobile customer will eventually hit the same API. The split-stack complexity is only worth it when the frontend truly needs to operate independently.
Laravel Sanctum issues tokens on login. Next.js middleware reads the token on every server-rendered request, rejects unauthenticated ones before the page renders, and calls a refresh endpoint when the token is close to expiry. For same-domain setups, cookie-based Sanctum with httpOnly cookies works well and avoids token storage in the browser entirely. Both patterns are tested and production-ready.
Laravel's CORS middleware is configured to allow the Vercel deployment URL, plus any additional origins — mobile apps, partner integrations, admin tools. This is set once in config/cors.php and managed per environment via environment variables. The most common production breakage I've seen on this stack comes from CORS being set correctly in local development and incorrectly in staging. I set it right the first time.
Public pages are cached by Vercel's CDN. Pages that update on a schedule use Next.js ISR with a revalidation window. Pages that must be fresh immediately after a data change use on-demand revalidation — Laravel fires a webhook on mutation, Next.js calls revalidateTag. Per-tenant cache invalidation on the Laravel side uses cache tags so one tenant's flush does not clear another's data.
Yes, and that is one of the main reasons to choose this architecture. Because the Laravel API is already headless and token-authenticated, adding a React Native or Flutter customer later requires no backend changes beyond possibly a new Sanctum token scope. You get the web frontend and the mobile-ready API from the same codebase, maintained by the same engineer.
The Next.js frontend calls a Laravel endpoint that generates a pre-signed S3 URL. The upload goes directly from the customer to S3 without touching the Laravel server. Laravel receives a callback, records the upload metadata, and the frontend displays the file via CloudFront. This keeps Laravel thin and keeps large files off your application servers.
For most MVPs I use AWS ECS Fargate for containerized Laravel, RDS Postgres for the database, Elasticache Redis for caching and queues, and S3 plus CloudFront for storage. Infrastructure is defined in Pulumi so it is reproducible and version-controlled. For teams that prefer a simpler path, Laravel Forge on a VPS works for early-stage products and can be migrated to ECS when traffic demands it.