Why I Switched from Laravel to Go

Introduction #

For years, I was a loyal Laravel developer. The framework felt like home — elegant syntax, great documentation, and a massive community that made web development smooth and enjoyable. But as my projects grew larger and more performance-critical, Laravel started to show its limits. That’s when I decided to explore Go (or Golang) — and eventually, I made the switch.

In this article, I’ll explain why I moved from Laravel to Go, the differences I experienced, and what I learned along the way.

1. Performance That Actually Matters #

Laravel is powerful, but it runs on PHP — which means there’s always an extra layer between your code and the machine. For most CRUD applications, that’s fine. But when you’re dealing with high concurrency, real-time APIs, or microservices, performance becomes a major bottleneck.

Go, on the other hand, is compiled, statically typed, and built for speed and concurrency. It runs closer to the metal, which means less overhead and faster response times. After migrating a few endpoints, I saw latency drop by more than 60%. That’s when I knew I was onto something.

2. Concurrency Made Simple #

One of Go’s biggest selling points is its built-in goroutines and channels. Coming from Laravel, I was used to dealing with queues and workers — but in Go, concurrency feels natural and minimalistic.

You can spin up thousands of goroutines without killing your server. No complex setup, no external dependencies — just pure efficiency.

This simplicity made me rethink how I designed backends. Instead of scaling horizontally with multiple PHP processes, I could now handle more with fewer resources.

3. Deployment Is Effortless #

Laravel apps usually need a whole environment: PHP runtime, Composer, web server (like Nginx), and often a process manager like Supervisor. With Go, I just compile once and deploy a single binary. That’s it.

No dependencies, no version mismatches, no production headaches. This “build and ship” approach changed the way I deploy apps — especially for Dockerized or cloud-native environments.

4. Code Maintainability and Readability #

Laravel’s expressive syntax is great for beginners and rapid prototyping. But once your codebase grows, managing controllers, middlewares, and service layers can get messy. Go’s philosophy is different: simplicity and clarity first.

Go forces you to write clean, readable, and predictable code. There’s less magic — which means fewer surprises when debugging or onboarding new developers.

5. Community and Ecosystem #

Laravel has a massive and friendly community, no doubt. Go’s community, while smaller, is incredibly focused on performance, scalability, and reliability — values that align with modern backend needs.

The Go ecosystem might not have as many “plug-and-play” packages as Laravel, but what it does have is high quality, well-documented, and actively maintained.

6. Learning Curve and Mindset Shift #

Switching from Laravel to Go wasn’t easy at first. Go feels “bare-bones” compared to Laravel’s batteries-included philosophy. I had to unlearn the framework mindset and embrace explicit over magic.

But once I did, everything clicked. I started to appreciate Go’s simplicity and the control it gives me over performance and architecture.

Conclusion #

Laravel will always have a special place in my heart — it’s a beautiful framework that taught me so much about web development. But for the kind of systems I build today — fast APIs, concurrent tasks, and scalable microservices — Go simply makes more sense.

If you’re a Laravel developer curious about Go, give it a try. It might feel weird at first, but you’ll quickly see why so many developers are making the switch.