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Dashboard and worker manager for Laravel Redis queues · by Laravel

Laravel Horizon

Free MIT package from the Laravel team that manages Redis queue workers from one config file and adds a dashboard for throughput, runtimes, failures and tags.

Visit laravel.com ↗ Alternatives Open source Open source Self-hostable
Laravel Horizon homepage
§1

Overview

Laravel Horizon is an official Laravel package, first released in 2017, that adds a dashboard and code-driven configuration to Laravel's Redis-powered queues. Job dispatching, retries and delays come from Laravel's queue itself; Horizon manages the workers that process them.

All worker settings live in config/horizon.php, keyed by environment, with supervisors defining queues, process counts, attempts, timeouts and backoff. Balancing strategies (auto, simple or none) move worker processes between queues based on load. You run php artisan horizon under a process monitor and terminate it on deploy so it reloads code.

The dashboard shows throughput, runtime, failures, recent and failed jobs, and jobs grouped by tags, and Horizon can notify you by Slack, SMS or email when queues have long wait times. It requires the redis queue driver and is not compatible with Redis Cluster.

§2

Pricing and plans

Plan Price What you get
Laravel Horizon Free MIT licence, maintained by the Laravel team

Horizon is free. Costs are your Redis server and the processes that run workers; scheduling of recurring tasks comes from Laravel's own task scheduler rather than Horizon.

Source: laravel.com/docs/horizon · prices as published, excluding tax.

§3

What it does

Code-driven worker config
Supervisors, process counts, attempts, timeouts and backoff per environment in one version-controlled file.
Auto balancing
Shifts worker processes between queues based on workload, with configurable max shift and cooldown.
Dashboard
Throughput, runtime, failures, recent and failed jobs, with dashboard authorisation.
Tags
Jobs are tagged automatically by Eloquent models, or manually, so you can search them.
Notifications
Alerts when a queue's wait time exceeds a threshold.
Metrics
Snapshots of job and queue wait times and throughput.
§4

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Free and maintained by the Laravel team
  • Worker configuration kept in source control
  • Built-in dashboard with failed-job inspection
  • Automatic balancing across queues

Limitations

  • Laravel only
  • Requires Redis; database and SQS queue drivers are not supported
  • Not compatible with Redis Cluster
  • Must be restarted on each deploy to load new code
§5

Who it suits

Good for

  • Laravel apps using Redis queues in production
  • Teams wanting visibility into job failures and throughput

Look elsewhere if

  • Laravel apps on database or SQS queues
  • Non-PHP stacks
§6

Alternatives to Laravel Horizon

Tool From Free option Stages
DBOS Postgres-backed durable workflow library
$99/mo Open source
Graphile Worker PostgreSQL job queue for Node.js
— Open source
Hangfire Background job library for .NET
$500/yr Open source
Sidekiq Redis-based background job library for Ruby
$99/mo Open source
BullMQ Redis-based job queue library
$139/mo Open source
Hatchet Postgres-backed task queue and durable workflow engine
Usage-based Free tier

All background jobs, queues and workflows →

§7

Questions

Is Laravel Horizon free?

Yes. Horizon is MIT-licensed and free.

Does Laravel Horizon require Redis?

Yes. Your queue connection must use the redis driver, and Redis Cluster is not supported.

How do I deploy Laravel Horizon?

Run php artisan horizon under a process monitor such as Supervisor and call horizon:terminate during deploys so it restarts with new code.

Does Horizon schedule cron jobs?

No. Recurring tasks come from Laravel's task scheduler; Horizon manages the queue workers.

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