Nodion vs Laravel Cloud
Laravel Cloud is the official managed PaaS built by the Laravel team, exclusively optimized for deploying and scaling Laravel applications on AWS infrastructure. It offers managed databases, object storage, caching and a Cloudflare-powered edge network. Nodion is a European all-in-one PaaS that supports any application via Docker and Buildpacks, with managed databases, object storage, CDN, transactional emails and DNS integrated into a single platform.
| Feature | Nodion | Laravel Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Stuttgart, Germany (EU) | Little Rock, Arkansas, USA |
| Data Residency | EU, US and APAC regions | US, EU and APAC regions (via AWS) |
| GDPR by Default | Yes | DPA available, US company |
| Supported Frameworks | Any (Docker + Buildpacks) | Laravel only |
| Managed PostgreSQL | Yes | Yes (Serverless Postgres) |
| Managed MySQL | Yes | Yes |
| Managed Valkey / Redis | Yes | Yes (Redis-compatible) |
| Object Storage | Yes (S3-compatible) | Yes (via Cloudflare R2) |
| Global CDN | Yes (25 locations) | Yes (Cloudflare Edge) |
| Transactional Emails | Yes (SMTP) | No (use external service) |
| Managed DNS | Yes (free, GeoDNS) | No |
| Billing Model | Per-second | Per-second + plan fee |
| Free Tier | First 5 EUR/month free | Starter (no base fee, pay per use) |
| Docker + Buildpacks | Yes | No (Laravel only) |
| Auto-Hibernation | No | Yes (scale to zero) |
Laravel-Only vs Any Stack
Laravel Cloud is built exclusively for Laravel applications running on PHP 8.2 through 8.5 with Laravel 9.x or later. If your project uses Rails, Django, Go, Node.js or any other framework, Laravel Cloud is not an option. Nodion supports any application that runs in a Docker container or can be built with Cloud Native Buildpacks, including Laravel. This makes Nodion suitable for teams with mixed technology stacks or projects that may evolve beyond a single framework.
EU Hosting and Data Sovereignty
Laravel Cloud is a US company based in Arkansas, running on AWS infrastructure. While it offers EU regions (Frankfurt, Ireland, London), the company itself operates under US jurisdiction. Nodion is a German company headquartered in Stuttgart, operating under EU law with data stored in EU data centers by default. For European organizations where the legal entity behind the platform matters, Nodion provides EU sovereignty natively.
Pricing and Billing
Laravel Cloud's Starter plan has no base fee, but its cheapest compute instance (Flex) starts at $4 per month and a MySQL database starts at $5.50 per month. The Growth plan, required for features like worker clusters and preview environments, adds a $20 per month base fee on top of usage. On Nodion, the smallest application instance costs approximately 1 EUR per month and a database starts at 1.50 EUR per month. The first 5 EUR of monthly usage is free for every user with no payment method required. A Laravel application with a MySQL database that costs at least $9.50 per month on Laravel Cloud can run for free on Nodion. Laravel Cloud does offer auto-hibernation that scales idle apps to zero, which can reduce costs for infrequently used applications.
Platform Breadth
Laravel Cloud provides managed databases (MySQL and Postgres), Redis-compatible caching, S3-compatible object storage via Cloudflare R2 and a Cloudflare-powered edge network with WAF. It does not include transactional emails or managed DNS. Nodion provides all of these plus transactional emails via SMTP and managed DNS with GeoDNS, all on a single platform with unified billing. Both platforms cover the core needs of a web application, but Nodion includes more ancillary services out of the box.
When Laravel Cloud Might Be the Better Choice
If your project is a Laravel application and you want a platform purpose-built for the framework, Laravel Cloud offers deep integration with the Laravel ecosystem: optimized deployments, built-in queue management, auto-hibernation and a workflow designed by the people who build the framework. Its auto-scaling and hibernation features are particularly attractive for applications with variable or intermittent traffic. For teams that run multiple frameworks, need EU sovereignty, want transactional emails and DNS included or prefer a framework-agnostic platform, Nodion is the more versatile choice.
Start for free! The first 5 EUR of monthly usage is free for everyone.