Laravel Performance: How I Cut Response Time by 60%

🐌 The Problem

My Laravel API was slow. Average response time was 800ms. Users were complaining. I had to do something.

After optimization, response time is down to 320ms. That's a 60% improvement.

The result: 60% faster responses. Here's what I did.

📊 Before and After

✅ Optimizations That Worked

1. Eager Loading

Fixed N+1 query problems:

// Before: N+1 queries
$posts = Post::all();
foreach ($posts as $post) {
    echo $post->author->name; // Query for each post
}

// After: Eager loading
$posts = Post::with('author')->get();
foreach ($posts as $post) {
    echo $post->author->name; // No additional queries
}

Impact: Reduced queries from 15 to 3 per request.

2. Query Caching

Cached expensive queries:

// Cache expensive queries
$users = Cache::remember('active_users', 3600, function () {
    return User::where('active', true)->get();
});

3. Response Caching

Cached entire responses for static data:

// Cache API responses
Route::get('/api/posts', function () {
    return Cache::remember('api_posts', 300, function () {
        return Post::with('author')->get();
    });
});

4. Database Indexing

Added indexes on frequently queried columns:

// Migration
Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->index('published_at');
    $table->index(['status', 'published_at']);
});

5. OPcache

Enabled OPcache for PHP:

; php.ini
opcache.enable=1
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000

6. Route Caching

Cached routes in production:

php artisan route:cache
php artisan config:cache
php artisan view:cache

📊 Performance Breakdown

💡 Key Takeaways

• Eager loading fixes N+1 queries (biggest win)
• Caching expensive queries saves time
• Database indexes speed up queries
• OPcache improves PHP performance
• Route/config caching helps in production

Laravel performance optimization is about fixing the basics: eager loading, caching, and indexing. These simple changes made a huge difference.