Laravel upgrade service: old versions to Laravel 13 and PHP 8

This Laravel upgrade service is for businesses whose app works but sits on a Laravel or PHP version that no longer gets fixes. Often the original developer has moved on, the host has warned about PHP end of life, a security scan has flagged old packages, or a new feature needs a package that will not install on the old version.

It is not a rebuild. I keep your code, your database and your features, and change what each new version requires. If the code is in such poor shape that upgrading would touch almost every file, I will say so and explain the trade-off before you spend money. For apps that are not on Laravel at all, a CodeIgniter to Laravel migration is the right starting point instead.

Laravel gives each major release 18 months of bug fixes and two years of security fixes, and ships a new major roughly every year in the first quarter. As of October 2026 the support picture looks like this:

• Laravel 13, released March 17, 2026, is current. It supports PHP 8.3 to 8.5, with security fixes until March 17, 2028
• Laravel 12 lost bug fixes on August 13, 2026 and gets security fixes only until February 24, 2027
• Laravel 11 stopped receiving security fixes on March 12, 2026, and Laravel 10 and older are well past end of life
• PHP 8.1 stopped getting security fixes at the end of 2025, and PHP 8.2 follows at the end of 2026

Laravel's own upgrade guides are good, and the Laravel team describes the move from 12 to 13 as a light one. The trouble is the older hops and the packages around the framework. These are the issues I plan for:

• Laravel 8: model factories became classes, so old $factory->define() files need rewriting or the legacy factories package
• Laravel 9: SwiftMailer was replaced by Symfony Mailer and Flysystem moved to version 3, which changes custom mail and storage code
• Laravel 10 and 11: minimum PHP rose to 8.1 and then 8.2, and Laravel 11 changed column modifications so every attribute must be restated
• Laravel 12: Carbon 2 support was removed, and Carbon 3's diffIn methods can return floats and negative values, which quietly breaks date math
• Laravel 13: PHP 8.3 is the minimum, and CSRF protection is formalized as the PreventRequestForgery middleware
• Packages: abandoned admin panels, old CORS or JWT packages, and anything pinned to an old illuminate/* version that blocks Composer

Many Laravel upgrades are really PHP upgrades in disguise, and some apps are not on Laravel at all. My PHP 8 upgrade service covers both. A PHP 7 to 8 migration usually fails on a handful of known changes: string-to-number comparisons that behave differently since PHP 8.0, undefined array keys now raising warnings, each() and create_function() removed, null passed to internal string functions deprecated in 8.1, dynamic properties deprecated in 8.2, and implicitly nullable parameters deprecated in 8.4.

A PHP 5.6 to 8 migration is a bigger job. The old mysql_* functions are gone entirely, so database code moves to PDO or mysqli with prepared statements, and that is also a chance to close SQL injection holes. For any legacy PHP upgrade I run PHPCompatibility checks and Rector first to find and fix the mechanical issues, then test the business flows by hand. I keep a PHP 8 upgrade checklist if you want to see the detail.

I work in Laravel and PHP 8 every day and have run production apps on Laravel 8 through 12, so the differences between versions are familiar ground, not something I read up on during your project. I know the packages that tend to block upgrades and the config changes that do not show up as errors until a user hits them.

You deal with one engineer from audit to go-live. I work remotely from India with clients in different time zones, and we agree on update times at the start. If you want the steps for the most recent hop, my Laravel 13 upgrade guide covers them, and ongoing care after the upgrade is available through PHP and Laravel maintenance.

Every upgrade gets a fixed quote after a short call or a written brief and a look at composer.json. The main drivers are how many major versions you need to cross, how many third-party packages you use and whether they are maintained, whether tests exist, how much custom code touches the framework's internals, and whether the server's PHP version can be changed easily or needs a new server.

Going from Laravel 12 to 13 on a well-kept app is often a short job. Going from Laravel 5.x on PHP 7.x to Laravel 13 is a project, but still usually far cheaper than a rebuild.