Nginx Performance Tuning for Laravel Applications

Nginx as Laravel's Gateway

Nginx is the first point of contact for requests to your Laravel application. Proper tuning can significantly improve performance and handle higher loads.

Worker Configuration

# /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

# One worker per CPU core
worker_processes auto;

events {
    worker_connections 4096;
    use epoll;
    multi_accept on;
}

http {
    # Buffers
    client_body_buffer_size 10K;
    client_header_buffer_size 1k;
    client_max_body_size 50M;
    large_client_header_buffers 2 1k;

    # Timeouts
    client_body_timeout 12;
    client_header_timeout 12;
    keepalive_timeout 65;
    send_timeout 10;
}

Compression

gzip on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/json
           application/javascript application/xml+rss
           application/atom+xml image/svg+xml;

Static Asset Caching

location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|woff2)$ {
    expires 1y;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
    access_log off;
}

FastCGI Caching

# Define cache zone
fastcgi_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2
    keys_zone=LARAVEL:100m inactive=60m;

server {
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_cache LARAVEL;
        fastcgi_cache_valid 200 60m;
        fastcgi_cache_bypass $http_pragma;
        fastcgi_cache_revalidate on;

        add_header X-Cache-Status $upstream_cache_status;
    }
}

PHP-FPM Configuration

# /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 50
pm.start_servers = 10
pm.min_spare_servers = 5
pm.max_spare_servers = 20
pm.max_requests = 500

# Socket connection (faster than TCP)
listen = /run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock

Load Balancing

upstream laravel {
    least_conn;
    server 10.0.0.1:9000 weight=5;
    server 10.0.0.2:9000 weight=5;
    keepalive 32;
}

Conclusion

Nginx tuning involves worker optimization, compression, caching, and PHP-FPM configuration. Test changes under load and monitor the impact.