Performance work in Laravel rarely comes down to one big trick. It's usually a handful of small, boring changes applied consistently across a codebase. Here are five I reach for on almost every production project.
1. Eager load your relationships
The N+1 query problem is still the most common performance issue I see in Laravel apps. If you're looping over a collection and touching a relationship inside the loop, you almost certainly want with() or load() instead.
2. Cache expensive, rarely-changing queries
Not everything needs to hit the database on every request. Dashboard stats, navigation menus, and settings are good candidates for a short-lived cache.
3. Push slow work onto queues
Sending email, generating PDFs, calling third-party APIs — none of that needs to block the response. Laravel's queue system makes it easy to defer this work.
Other habits worth building
- Add database indexes for columns you filter or sort by
- Use chunked queries when processing large tables
- Profile with Laravel Debugbar or Telescope before optimizing blindly
None of this is exotic. It's mostly discipline — but that discipline is what keeps an app fast as it grows.