There is a particular kind of Laravel application that we see more than any other. It runs the business — orders, bookings, quotes, a customer portal — and it was built three or four years ago by a developer who has since moved on. Nobody currently employed has opened the codebase. It works, mostly, and everyone is a little afraid of it. When something finally breaks, or a customer asks for a change, the question arrives: do we hire a developer, or do we pay someone to look after it?
This article is an honest attempt at that comparison. We sell one side of it, so we have been careful to say when the other side wins.
The orphaned-application pattern
The pattern usually goes like this. An application is built, by an agency or a freelancer or an early employee. It launches, it works, and the budget for it stops because the work is "done". The developer moves on. The framework keeps releasing — Laravel ships a major every year and PHP every November — and nobody is tasked with following. Two or three years later the application is several majors behind, running on a PHP version that is out of security support, with a handful of packages that have been abandoned by their authors.
Nothing is wrong yet. Then one of three things happens: the hosting provider announces the old PHP version is being removed, a customer asks for a feature nobody can safely add, or something breaks at nine on a Monday morning and there is no one to call. That is the day the question gets asked, and it is the worst possible day to be asking it.
What a hire actually costs
The salary is the number everyone has in mind, and it is the smallest part of the surprise. Here is the full list.
- The search. Finding a competent Laravel developer in the UK or EU takes two to four months from writing the job description to a signed offer, longer if you are outside a major city or cannot offer remote work. During those months the application is exactly as orphaned as it was before.
- Recruiter fees. If you use an agency, expect a fee in the region of fifteen to twenty-five percent of first-year salary. On a mid-level salary that is a meaningful five-figure sum before the person has started.
- The salary itself. Advertised UK ranges for a mid-level Laravel developer tend to cluster in the mid-£40,000s to the £60,000s a year, with senior roles above that; US salaries run higher again. Check your local job boards for a current figure — the exact number matters less than what sits on top of it.
- Employer costs. Employer tax contributions, pension, holiday, sick leave, equipment, software licences, and a share of whatever your business spends on each desk. A common rule of thumb puts the fully loaded cost at twenty-five to forty percent above salary.
- Ramp-up. A new hire inherits an undocumented codebase. Expect one to three months before they are confidently shipping changes rather than reading, and expect the first few changes to be slow and cautious. That time is paid for.
- Management. Someone has to set priorities, review work and run the one-to-ones. If nobody in the business can review Laravel code, you have hired a person nobody can evaluate.
- The risk of leaving. A single developer is a single point of failure. If they leave after eighteen months, you are back at the top of this list, and the application is orphaned again.
None of this means hiring is wrong. It means a hire is a decision to build an engineering function, and it should be priced as one.
The freelancer alternative
The middle option is a freelancer on an hourly or day rate. YunoJuno's 2025 freelancer rate report puts the UK average for a full-stack developer at around £63 an hour, and experienced Laravel specialists charge more. A freelancer removes the recruiter fee and the employer costs, and you can start in weeks rather than months. What you do not get is an SLA: freelancers have other clients, and the one who knows your application may be unavailable on the Monday morning it matters. You also pay by the hour for the work, so the total is only known afterwards.
What a care plan covers
Which Laravel version is your app on?
Paste your composer.json into the free audit. Within 24 hours you get the end-of-life dates, the abandoned packages, and a fixed price for bringing it current.
A care plan is a fixed block of senior engineering hours every month on your application, with a named engineer who stays on the account, a response-time SLA, and a monthly health report that lists versions, vulnerabilities and what changed. The full detail is on the care plans page; here is what each tier buys.
| Plan | Price | Hours a month | Response SLA | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $500 per month | 6 | Next business day; Same day for security incidents | Patched, monitored and never more than one minor version behind. |
| Standard | $900 per month | 12 | Same business day; 4 hours for security incidents and outages | Current, and moving: small changes land every month. |
| Partner | $1,500 per month | 24 | 4 hours; 4 hours, including weekends for outages | A senior engineer on your team three days a month. |
All three run on a three-month minimum and then month to month. Unused hours do not roll over; a client who needs more buys the next tier or a fixed-price sprint. You own the code and can host it wherever you like.
Essentials: $500 a month, 6 hours
For an application that needs to be kept safe rather than changed. Security patches and dependency updates land within the SLA, uptime, errors and queues are monitored, and the monthly report tells you where you stand. The engineer is named and stays on the account, so the second month is faster than the first. Response is Next business day, Same day for security incidents.
Standard: $900 a month, 12 hours
Everything in Essentials, plus the small features and bug fixes that have been sitting in your backlog. A performance and database review each quarter, a staging environment kept in step with production, and a same-business-day response. This is the tier most businesses with a live application pick, because it is the one where the application starts moving forward again.
Partner: $1,500 a month, 24 hours
A senior engineer on your team three days a month. Everything in Standard, plus a monthly planning call and written roadmap, architecture and security reviews before big changes, a direct line during UK and EU hours, and a pre-agreed day rate for anything beyond the plan. Response is 4 hours, 4 hours, including weekends for outages.
What a care plan does not do
It does not catch an application up from five majors behind; that is a fixed-price upgrade, from $2,500, and we wrote up what that costs separately. It does not build a new product. And it does not replace a product owner: someone in your business still decides what matters, we just make sure it ships.
When you should hire instead
Honestly, in several situations:
- You need more than about forty hours a month, every month. At that volume a care plan is the wrong shape and a full-time person is cheaper per hour. Our largest plan is 24 hours; if you are consistently buying sprints on top of it, hire.
- The application is the product. If you sell software, the people who build it are your core team and should be on your payroll, learning your customers.
- You are building, not maintaining. A roadmap with a new module every quarter wants a developer in your standups, not a monthly planning call.
- You already have an engineering team. Add to it. A care plan is for the business that has no one, not a substitute for the team you have.
- Domain knowledge is the asset. Some applications encode years of business rules that take months to learn. If that learning is the valuable part, you want it inside the company.
In each of those cases we would rather tell you to hire than sell you a plan that does not fit. A care plan can still be the bridge while you recruit, and the upgrade before the new person starts is usually the kindest thing you can do for them.
Comparing like with like
The honest comparison is not salary against plan price; it is what each one actually delivers for the money.
| Hire | Freelancer | Care plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | 2–4 months | Weeks | Days |
| Up-front cost | Recruiter fee, equipment | None | None (three-month minimum) |
| Monthly cost | Fully loaded salary | Hours worked at the rate | Fixed: $500, $900 or $1,500 |
| Response SLA | Working hours, one person | Best effort | Next business day to 4 hours, written down |
| Framework kept current | If you prioritise it | If you ask and pay | Included |
| Monitoring and reporting | If you set it up | Rarely | Included |
| Continuity if a person leaves | Back to the search | Back to the search | Studio responsibility |
| Capacity for big builds | Full-time | As booked | Limited; sprints on top |
A decision checklist
Answer these and the decision usually makes itself.
- How many hours of developer work does the application actually need each month? Be honest; most orphaned applications need fewer than twelve once they are current. If the answer is forty or more, hire.
- Is the application the business, or does it support the business? If it is the business, hire. If it supports the business, a plan is usually the better fit.
- Can anyone in the company review Laravel code? If not, a hire has no one to manage them; a plan comes with its own review.
- What happens on the Monday morning something breaks? If you need a written response time, you need a plan or an agency, not a lone hire or a freelancer.
- How far behind is the application today? If it is several majors behind, the first job is an upgrade regardless of who does the ongoing work. The audit will tell you, free, within a day.
- What does the next twelve months look like? Maintenance and small changes: plan. A new product line: hire, and use a plan as the bridge.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Laravel maintenance cost per month?
Our care plans are $500 a month for 6 engineering hours with a next-business-day SLA, $900 for 12 hours with a same-business-day SLA, and $1,500 for 24 hours with a four-hour SLA. All include a named engineer, monitoring and a monthly health report, on a three-month minimum. UK agency retainers for comparable work are typically priced on an hourly basis at roughly double the effective rate.
Is a care plan cheaper than hiring a developer?
For an application that needs fewer than about forty hours of work a month, yes, by a wide margin once recruiter fees, employer costs and ramp-up are counted. For an application that needs a full-time developer's worth of work, no: at that volume a hire is cheaper per hour and you should make one.
What is the minimum commitment?
Three months, then month to month. The first month is mostly learning the application and bringing monitoring and patching up to standard, which is why a one-month trial would not tell you much.
What if my application is several Laravel versions behind?
Then the first step is a fixed-price upgrade rather than a care plan. An Upgrade Sprint from $2,500 covers one or two majors plus PHP; a Full Upgrade covers three or more. The care plan starts once the application is current, and its job is to keep it there. See the pricing page for the full breakdown.
Can we move to a hire later?
Yes, and we will help. Everything we do is documented in your repository, the monthly reports are a ready-made briefing, and the hand-over to your new developer is part of the last month of the plan rather than an extra.
Not sure which you need?
Start with the free Laravel audit: paste your composer.json and within a day you know how far behind the application is and what it would take to bring it current. Then compare the care plans, or talk to us — if the honest answer is that you should hire, we will say so.
