Which Are the Best Laravel Development Tools for Developers

Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks for building web applications. Known for its elegant syntax, powerful tools, and developer-friendly environment, Laravel has become the go-to choice for many developers around the globe. However, as projects grow in complexity, using the right development tools becomes essential for maximizing productivity, maintaining code quality, and speeding up the development process.

In this blog, we will explore some of the best Laravel development tools that every developer should consider adding to their toolkit. Whether you are just getting started with Laravel or are an experienced developer looking to optimize your workflow, these tools will help you build better, faster, and more secure applications.

1. Laravel Artisan

Purpose: Command-line interface for Laravel

Artisan is Laravel’s built-in command-line interface, offering a wide range of commands that help automate repetitive tasks such as database migrations, controller creation, and more. With Artisan, you can also create your own custom commands to further tailor it to your workflow.

Key Features:

• Generate controllers, models, migrations, and more

• Run database migrations and seeders

• Schedule tasks and queue jobs

• Access application routes and environment

Why Use It? Artisan boosts productivity by eliminating the need to manually create boilerplate code and by simplifying backend tasks.

2. Laravel Tinker

Purpose: Interactive shell for Laravel

Laravel Tinker provides an interactive shell powered by the PsySH REPL (Read–Eval–Print Loop), allowing you to interact with your Laravel application directly from the command line.

Key Features:

• Test Eloquent queries

• Debug application logic

• Run arbitrary PHP code within the Laravel context

Why Use It? Tinker is invaluable for quick experimentation, database testing, and debugging without needing to build front-end interfaces.

3. Laravel Debugbar

Purpose: Debugging tool for Laravel applications

Laravel Debugbar is an open-source package that integrates PHP Debug Bar into Laravel. It displays profiling data such as request performance, route details, and SQL queries in a visual interface at the bottom of your browser window.

Key Features:

• Detailed logging of requests, sessions, and views

• SQL query monitoring

• Memory usage tracking

• Custom message logging

Why Use It? Laravel Debugbar is extremely useful for monitoring what’s happening behind the scenes in real-time, making debugging easier and faster.

4. Laravel Telescope

Purpose: Debug assistant and insights dashboard

Telescope is Laravel's official debugging assistant, offering a powerful UI for tracking requests, exceptions, logs, queries, and more. It provides deep insights into the behavior of your application during development.

Key Features:

• Request lifecycle tracking

• Exception and error logging

• Query and event monitoring

• Cache, mail, notifications, and jobs overview

Why Use It? Telescope gives a comprehensive overview of your Laravel app’s internal operations, which is crucial during development and testing.

5. Laravel Valet

Purpose: Development environment for macOS

Laravel Valet is a super-lightweight development environment tailored for macOS users. It configures your system to serve Laravel applications instantly without the need for complex setups like Homestead or Docker.

Key Features:

• Fast installation and minimal configuration

• Automatic SSL

• Supports multiple frameworks (not just Laravel)

• Runs in the background with minimal resource usage

Why Use It? If you're a Mac user looking for a simple and fast way to run Laravel projects locally, Valet is a must-have.

6. Laravel Homestead

Purpose: Official Laravel Vagrant box

Laravel Homestead is a pre-packaged Vagrant box that provides a robust local development environment. It includes Nginx, PHP, MySQL, Redis, and more — everything needed to run a Laravel application.

Key Features:

• Cross-platform compatibility

• No need to install PHP or other services on your host OS

• Secure and consistent development environment

Why Use It? Homestead is ideal for teams or developers who need consistency across environments and don’t want to clutter their machines with multiple services.

7. PHPStorm (with Laravel Plugin)

Purpose: IDE with Laravel integration

PHPStorm is a powerful IDE by JetBrains that provides Laravel-specific features when combined with its Laravel plugin. It includes intelligent code completion, navigation, and refactoring tailored for Laravel applications.

Key Features:

• Blade templating support

• Route and controller navigation

• Database integration

• Debugging and testing tools

Why Use It? If you want an all-in-one IDE that streamlines Laravel development, PHPStorm is worth the investment.

8. Laravel Mix

Purpose: Asset compilation and management

Laravel Mix is a wrapper around Webpack that simplifies the process of compiling CSS, JavaScript, and other assets for your application.

Key Features:

• Supports Sass, Less, and PostCSS

• JavaScript bundling with Webpack

• Versioning and cache busting

• Extensible with plugins and custom configuration

Why Use It? Mix takes the pain out of asset management and is perfect for developers who want modern tooling without deep Webpack knowledge.

9. Laravel Envoyer

Purpose: Zero-downtime deployment tool

Envoyer is a commercial deployment tool from Laravel creator Taylor Otwell. It provides zero-downtime deployment for Laravel applications.

Key Features:

• Git-based deployments

• Rollback support

• Health checks and status pages

• Slack and email notifications

Why Use It? For production-ready Laravel applications, Envoyer ensures seamless deployment without disrupting user experience.

10. Laravel Forge

Purpose: Server provisioning and management

Laravel Forge is another official tool that automates server deployment and configuration for PHP applications.

Key Features:

• Deploy Laravel on DigitalOcean, AWS, Linode, and more

• SSL, Nginx, and queue configuration

• Scheduled jobs and deployments

• Database backups and monitoring

Why Use It? Forge simplifies the DevOps side of Laravel development, especially for developers who want to focus on code, not infrastructure.

11. Laravel Nova

Purpose: Admin panel builder

Laravel Nova is a beautifully designed administration panel for Laravel applications. It allows you to create CRUD interfaces and dashboards with minimal effort.

Key Features:

• Resource management

• Metrics and dashboards

• Custom tools and lenses

• Relationship management

Why Use It? Nova is perfect for internal dashboards, admin panels, or even back-office applications. It saves development time and looks great out of the box.

12. Laravel IDE Helper

Purpose: Improved code completion

Laravel IDE Helper generates helper files that enable better code auto-completion and navigation in IDEs like PHPStorm or VS Code.

Key Features:

• Auto-generates PHPDoc annotations

• Recognizes Eloquent relationships

• Improves model and facade suggestions

Why Use It? If you're using an IDE or code editor, this tool drastically improves the development experience by making Laravel features easier to discover.

13. Clockwork

Purpose: Development tool for debugging and profiling

Clockwork is a PHP debugging tool that integrates with Laravel and provides a Chrome extension for easy access to debugging data.

Key Features:

• HTTP request profiling

• Route and controller details

• Query performance and logging

• Timeline view

Why Use It? Clockwork is a great alternative or complement to Debugbar, especially for Chrome users.

14. Laravel Snippets for VS Code

Purpose: Code snippets and autocompletion

This Visual Studio Code extension provides Laravel-specific snippets to boost coding speed.

Key Features:

• Blade snippets

• Artisan command snippets

• Route and controller snippets

• Eloquent and DB facade helpers

Why Use It? It helps developers write code faster and reduces repetitive typing by providing handy code shortcuts.

Conclusion

Laravel is powerful out of the box, but when paired with the right development tools, it becomes even more efficient, productive, and enjoyable to work with. Whether you’re writing your first Laravel app or managing a large-scale enterprise application, tools like Artisan, Telescope, Forge, and Nova can significantly streamline your workflow and improve application quality.

Choosing the best tools depends on your specific needs — from local development setups (Valet, Homestead) to deployment and server management (Forge, Envoyer) and debugging (Telescope, Debugbar, Clockwork). By integrating these tools into your Laravel workflow, you can focus more on building features and less on handling repetitive tasks or chasing bugs.