How to hire a Laravel developer in 2026: a practical checklist and 20 interview questions

If you are working out how to hire a Laravel developer, the short version is this: write down what you need built, pick the hiring model that fits it, check real code rather than CVs, ask questions that only experience can answer, and pay for a small trial task before you commit to the whole project. Most bad hires happen because a step was skipped. This guide walks through each step from the other side of the table: I am a Laravel developer who regularly inherits code other people wrote. Whether you want to hire Laravel developer help for a few weeks or hire a freelance Laravel developer for a long project, the steps are the same; the hire a Laravel developer page explains how I work if you would like to talk directly.

How to hire a Laravel developer: the short version

1. Define the work. A new build, an existing app that needs features, an upgrade, or a rescue of code someone else wrote. Each needs a slightly different person.
2. Choose the model. Freelancer, agency or in-house hire, based on scope, budget and how much management you can give it.
3. Source with intent. Different places give you different signals about quality.
4. Review real code. A public repository, a code sample or a walkthrough of a past project tells you more than a portfolio of screenshots.
5. Interview on judgment, not trivia. Use the 20 questions below.
6. Run a paid trial task. A few hours of real work, reviewed properly.
7. Contract for ownership. Your repository, your servers, your accounts, and a written handover.

Do you need a Laravel developer, a PHP generalist or a full team?

Start by naming the job, because "Laravel developer" covers a wide range of people. If your app is plain PHP with no framework, read core PHP vs Laravel first: it changes who you should hire.

• A new web application or SaaS product. You want someone who has taken a Laravel app from an empty repository to production, including authentication, queues, deployment and the boring parts like backups. Front-end skill matters too: Blade with Livewire, or Inertia with React or Vue. If the app needs a back office, ask whether they have used Filament or Nova (how the two compare).
• An existing Laravel app that needs features. You want someone who reads code well, writes tests around what they touch and does not try to rewrite everything in week one. This is the core of PHP and Laravel maintenance work.
• An upgrade from an old version. You want someone who has done major upgrades before and knows which packages tend to break. Laravel 10 stopped receiving security fixes on February 4th, 2025, according to the official support table (opens in a new tab), so a lot of apps are in this category right now.
• A mixed PHP estate. If your business also runs CodeIgniter, WordPress or plain PHP, a developer who is comfortable outside Laravel saves you a second hire.
• A large product with design, mobile and DevOps needs. One person will not cover all of that well. You need a team, either assembled by you or supplied by an agency.

Freelancer, agency or in-house: a decision table

The trade-offs go deeper than a table can show, so I wrote a separate guide on freelancer vs agency that covers hidden risks on both sides.

What to look for in a Laravel developer in 2026

Laravel moves on a yearly cycle. Laravel 13 (opens in a new tab) was released on March 17th, 2026 and requires PHP 8.3 or newer. Laravel 12 stopped receiving bug fixes on August 13th, 2026 and gets security fixes until February 24th, 2027. A developer who is current should be able to talk about these without looking them up.

Here is what I would check for, roughly in order of importance:

• Modern PHP. PHP 8.3 or later, typed properties, enums, readonly properties and named arguments. On php.net's supported versions page (opens in a new tab), PHP 8.3 is in security-only support, while 8.4 and 8.5 are in active support.
• Eloquent and SQL together. Knowing Eloquent is not enough. A good developer can read the SQL it produces, add the right index and explain why a query is slow.
• Queues, jobs and the scheduler. Most real business apps send emails, sync with other systems, scrape or import data and process files in the background. Ask how they run workers in production.
• Transactions and locking. Anything involving money, stock or balances needs DB::transaction() and, where two requests can race, lockForUpdate(). I use both daily, and the bugs from getting this wrong are the expensive kind.
• Security habits. Validation through Form Requests, authorization through policies, signed webhooks, secrets kept out of Git.
• Testing. Feature tests with Pest or PHPUnit around the flows that make or lose money. Not 100% coverage, just the parts that matter.
• Front-end fit. The official starter kits (opens in a new tab) now offer React, Vue and Svelte through Inertia, or Livewire with Flux UI. Hire for the stack your app uses.
• AI features, if you need them. Laravel 13 introduced the first-party Laravel AI SDK (composer require laravel/ai) for text generation, agents, embeddings and more. If AI is on your roadmap, ask how they handle API cost, failures and the privacy of what is sent to the provider. I compare the two main options in Laravel OpenAI integration.
• Deployment. SSH, cPanel or a managed platform, cron and Supervisor. Code that only works on a laptop is not finished.

Where to find Laravel developers (and what each source tells you)

Most people who hire freelance Laravel developers start on a marketplace, and reviews there are useful but shallow. A five-star review usually means "delivered on time and was friendly". It says nothing about whether the code will survive the next upgrade, so use every source to build a shortlist, then choose with the steps below. If you are hiring offshore, my guide to hiring a web developer in India covers contracts, payments and time zones.

Reviewing a portfolio and GitHub: what good Laravel code looks like

Many good developers have little public code because client work is private. Ask instead for a code sample, or a screen-share walkthrough where they explain their decisions.

What I look for when I review someone else's Laravel code:

• Controllers that are short, with validation in Form Requests and business logic in actions, services or jobs.
• Database migrations that match the models, with indexes on the columns used for filtering and joins.
• Eager loading where lists are displayed, and no queries hidden inside Blade loops.
• Tests that exist and pass, even if there are only a few.
• A .env.example file, a README that explains setup, and no credentials committed anywhere in the history.
• Consistent formatting, usually enforced with Laravel Pint.

The single most common performance mistake I find in inherited code is the N+1 query problem. It looks innocent:

// N+1: one query for the orders, then one more query per order
$orders = Order::latest()->take(50)->get();

foreach ($orders as $order) {
    echo $order->customer->name;
}

// Eager loaded: two queries in total, however many orders there are
$orders = Order::with('customer')->latest()->take(50)->get();

A careful developer also turns on lazy-loading protection outside production so these mistakes fail loudly during development:

// app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

public function boot(): void
{
    Model::preventLazyLoading(! $this->app->isProduction());
}

20 Laravel developer interview questions (and what a strong answer sounds like)

These are the questions to ask a Laravel developer when you want to hear judgment, not memorized definitions. You do not need to be technical to use them: listen for specific examples and trade-offs. Vague answers and buzzwords are the warning sign.

Architecture

1. What happens between a request reaching public/index.php and the response? A strong answer covers booting the app, service providers, middleware, routing, the controller and the response travelling back through middleware.
2. When would you bind something in the service container yourself? Listen for a real example, such as binding a payment gateway interface to a concrete class so it can be swapped or faked in tests.
3. How do you keep controllers thin? Form Requests, policies, action or service classes and jobs. A good answer also admits that a tiny CRUD controller does not need five layers.
4. What is the N+1 problem and how do you catch it? Eager loading with with(), lazy-loading prevention in development, and checking query counts with a debug tool.

Data

5. How would you import a CSV with 200,000 rows? Read it in chunks, process it in queued jobs, validate each row and report errors back to the user, and make the import safe to rerun. On an export ERP I led, bulk imports were batched for exactly this reason.
6. Tell me about an index you added and why. Strong candidates mention composite index column order and checking the query plan with EXPLAIN.
7. When do you need a transaction, and when do you also need lockForUpdate()? A transaction keeps several writes all-or-nothing. A row lock stops two requests from reading the same balance or stock count at the same time and both acting on it.

Queues and background work

8. A queued job charges a card, then sends an email. The email fails and the job retries. What happens? The right answer spots the double-charge risk and fixes it with idempotency: split the steps into separate jobs, or record that the charge succeeded before anything else can fail.
9. How do you run queue workers in production? Supervisor or systemd, php artisan queue:restart on every deploy, sensible timeouts, and someone watching the failed jobs table.
10. How does the task scheduler run? One cron entry that calls php artisan schedule:run every minute, plus withoutOverlapping() for long tasks.

Security

11. How does Laravel protect against mass assignment, and how can a developer still get it wrong? $fillable or $guarded on models, and passing $request->validated() instead of $request->all().
12. Where can SQL injection still happen in a Laravel app? Raw expressions such as whereRaw() or DB::raw() with user input, and sorting by a column name taken straight from the query string. Bindings and an allow-list of columns fix both.
13. How do you stop one customer from seeing another customer's data? Policies and query scoping on every request, not just hiding buttons in the interface.
14. How do you handle an incoming webhook? Verify the signature, store the event ID so duplicates are ignored, return a 2xx response quickly and do the work in a queued job.
15. Where do secrets live, and why should env() only be called inside config files? Secrets stay in .env, which is never committed. After php artisan config:cache, the .env file is no longer loaded, so env() calls elsewhere stop returning your values.

Quality and delivery

16. You inherit an app with no tests. What do you test first? Feature tests around the money flows and the most-used screens, using fakes such as Http::fake() and Queue::fake() for outside services.
17. How would you upgrade a Laravel 10 app to Laravel 13? One major version at a time using the official upgrade guides, checking PHP and package compatibility first, running tests at each step and releasing through staging.
18. How do you deploy without breaking things for users? Backward-compatible migrations, caching config, routes and views on the server, restarting queue workers, and a rollback plan.
19. Have you added AI features to an app? How did you control cost and failures? Look for timeouts, retries, logging of usage, and a human review step where mistakes are costly.
20. Tell me about a production incident you caused or fixed. Everyone experienced has one. You want an honest story with a root cause and what they changed afterwards.

A paid trial task reveals more than an interview

If you take one step from this guide on how to hire a Laravel developer, make it this one. An interview tests how someone talks. A trial task tests how they work.

A good trial task:

• Takes a few hours, not days, and you pay for it at the agreed rate.
• Uses a slice of your real problem, such as "add an import for this CSV format, with validation and a test", rather than a puzzle.
• Is delivered as a pull request into a repository you own.
• Gets reviewed by someone technical you trust.

Then look at what came back. Did they ask questions before starting? Is there a test? Did they explain what they left out? Those habits will repeat on the real project.

Red flags when hiring a Laravel developer

• No version control, or they want to work directly on your live server.
• No tests at all and no interest in adding any.
• "I can build it in a week" before they have asked about roles, integrations or edge cases.
• No upgrade experience, if your app is on an old version.
• Credentials in code, or asking you to share passwords by chat instead of creating separate accounts.
• They avoid showing any code, not even a sample or a walkthrough.
• Everything is a rewrite. Sometimes it is right, but it needs reasons.

What to put in the contract

Settle ownership at the start, because it is painful to fix later:

• Intellectual property assignment. In many countries the person who writes the code owns it unless a written agreement says otherwise. Make the assignment explicit.
• Your repository and your accounts. The code lives in your GitHub or GitLab organization from day one. Hosting, domain, payment gateway and email accounts are in your name, with the developer added as a user.
• Milestones tied to working software. Pay against features delivered to staging, not against hours alone.
• Documentation and handover. A README with setup steps, a list of scheduled tasks and queues, and where each credential lives.
• Confidentiality. An NDA if your data or idea needs one.
• Support after launch. How bugs found after go-live are handled, and how ongoing work is billed.

What drives the cost of hiring a Laravel developer

I do not publish rates, and any single number you read online hides most of what matters. What actually moves the cost:

• Scope and how clearly it is written down.
• Seniority. A senior developer often costs more per hour and less per finished feature.
• Integrations such as payment gateways, accounting software and third-party APIs.
• Timeline pressure, which reduces options and raises risk.
• The state of existing code, if you are not starting fresh.
• Ongoing maintenance and yearly upgrades after launch.

I cover these in more depth in what affects web application development cost. For my own work, a fixed quote follows a short call or a written brief.

Frequently asked questions

Should I hire a freelance Laravel developer or an agency?

Hire a freelance Laravel developer when the scope is clear, the app is small to medium and you can answer questions quickly. Choose an agency when you need design, development and QA delivered together, or when the work needs several people at once. With a freelancer you talk directly to the person writing your code, which usually means fewer misunderstandings.

What are the most important Laravel developer interview questions?

The most useful ones ask about real situations: handling a failed queued job safely, preventing N+1 queries, protecting data between customers, and upgrading an old version. Ask for an example from their own work each time. Specific stories are much harder to fake than definitions.

How long does it take to hire Laravel developers?

Through a referral or a marketplace, a shortlist can come together within days. Allow time for code review, an interview and a paid trial task before you commit to a large project. Rushing past the trial is where most hiring mistakes happen.

Can a Laravel developer work on my existing app built by someone else?

Yes, and it is common. A good developer starts by reading the code, setting up a local copy and checking versions, then gives you an honest assessment before changing anything. If the app is on an unsupported version, plan a Laravel upgrade early, because the gap only grows.

If you would like to skip some of these steps with someone whose work you can check in the brokerage risk platform and export operations ERP case studies, you can hire me as your Laravel developer and we can start with a short call about your project.