Laravel vs Hono for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Laravel Overview

Laravel is the full-stack PHP framework that includes everything you'd ever need for web development. ORM, authentication, queues, mail, notifications, scheduling, caching, and a thriving admin panel ecosystem. You can go from zero to a production application with user management, email verification, and an admin dashboard without installing a single additional package.

I've built projects in multiple frameworks and Laravel consistently gets me to "something shippable" faster than anything else. The Artisan CLI generates models, controllers, and migrations. Eloquent makes database queries readable. And the documentation is, genuinely, some of the best in the industry. When you hit a problem, the answer is usually in the official docs.

The trade-off is PHP. You're running PHP-FPM, managing Composer dependencies, and deploying to a PHP-compatible server. For JavaScript-native developers, that's a context switch. But for productivity, it's hard to argue with the results.

Hono Overview

Hono is the lightweight web framework that runs everywhere. Cloudflare Workers, Bun, Deno, Node.js, AWS Lambda, Fastly. It weighs under 14KB, starts instantly, and gives you Express-like routing with modern TypeScript support. It's the antithesis of "batteries included." It's "here are the essentials, now build."

What drew me to Hono was the multi-runtime story. I wrote an API, deployed it to Cloudflare Workers for edge performance, and later moved it to Bun for a VPS deployment without changing a single line of application code. That portability is valuable when you're iterating quickly and don't want to be locked into one platform.

Hono also has a growing middleware ecosystem. JWT auth, CORS, rate limiting, Zod validation. You're not assembling from zero, but you're definitely assembling. Each middleware is a deliberate choice, which means more decisions but also more control.

Key Differences

Philosophy is the core difference. Laravel includes everything and lets you ignore what you don't need. Hono includes the minimum and lets you add what you want. Both approaches work. The question is which trade-off suits your project and your working style.

Feature scope gap. Laravel has an ORM, admin panel ecosystem, queue system, scheduler, mailer, and more. Hono has a router, middleware system, and TypeScript support. For a complex web application with users, roles, and background processing, you'd need to assemble 8-10 additional packages with Hono to match what Laravel gives you on day one.

Performance profile. Hono on Cloudflare Workers or Bun is significantly faster than Laravel for API workloads. If you're building a latency-sensitive API that serves millions of requests, Hono's overhead is essentially zero. Laravel is fast enough for most applications, but it's not competing on raw throughput.

Edge deployment. Hono on Cloudflare Workers runs at the edge, close to your users globally. Laravel runs on a server in one region (unless you set up multi-region infrastructure). For globally distributed users, edge deployment reduces latency meaningfully.

Development speed. Laravel gets you to a working app faster because you're not making decisions about tooling. Hono gets you to a working API faster because the framework is so minimal there's nothing to configure. Which "faster" matters depends on what you're building.

Language. PHP vs. JavaScript/TypeScript. If you already know one but not the other, that probably decides this.

When to Choose Laravel

• You're building a full-stack application with user auth, admin panel, and complex business logic
• You want everything built-in and ready to use
• Background jobs, scheduling, and email notifications are part of your product
• You value convention and structure over flexibility
• You're okay with PHP and want the productivity benefits

When to Choose Hono

• You're building a pure API with fewer than 20-30 endpoints
• Edge deployment (Cloudflare Workers) is important for your use case
• You want runtime portability across Bun, Deno, and Node.js
• Performance and minimal overhead are priorities
• You prefer JavaScript/TypeScript and want to stay in that ecosystem
• You're building something lightweight that doesn't need an ORM or admin panel

The Verdict

These two frameworks solve different problems at different scales. Laravel is a workshop with every tool on the wall. Hono is a precision screwdriver set. Both are excellent at what they do.

For solo developers building a full web application, Laravel is the pragmatic choice. You'll ship faster because you won't spend time choosing and configuring supporting libraries. The admin panel alone saves days of development time.

For solo developers building a focused API, especially one that benefits from edge deployment or needs to run across multiple runtimes, Hono is the better fit. It stays out of your way and lets you build exactly what you need without framework overhead.

Pick based on what you're building, not which technology sounds cooler. A Laravel app deployed in two weeks beats a Hono API that's still being assembled after a month because you had to build everything yourself.