Originally published on laravel.learnio.dev — part of the Laravel best practices course. View this lesson on the original site.

Boot Laravel locally

Once your project is created, this is the shortest path to a running local Laravel app.

Boot the app locally

From your project root (the folder containing artisan):

php artisan serve

Laravel prints a local URL, usually:

http://127.0.0.1:8000

Open that URL in your browser. You should see the default Laravel welcome page.

What this confirms

A successful first run confirms:

  • framework boot is working,
  • dependencies were installed correctly,
  • app key/config load correctly,
  • your local PHP runtime can execute the app.

Quick run-flow mental model

flowchart LR
  A[Run php artisan serve] --> B[Open local URL]
  B --> C[Request enters public/index.php]
  C --> D[Laravel boots and resolves route]
  D --> E[Welcome response rendered]

If it does not start

Check in this order:

  1. You are in the right folder (ls artisan should find the file).
  2. Dependencies exist (vendor/ present).
  3. .env exists and APP_KEY is set.
  4. Port is free (try php artisan serve --port=8080).

Practical checkpoint

Before moving on, confirm you can:

  • start the app,
  • stop it with Ctrl+C,
  • restart it on a different port.

That baseline saves time when debugging later chapters.

From Laravel best practices — What is Laravel?