Laravel Reverb: Production WebSockets & Scaling | Mohamed Said [ ![Mohamed Said](https://cdn.msaied.com/01KT78WE565VEMM3PSNQAAB0MH.png) Mohamed Said Laravel Backend Engineer ](https://msaied.com) [ Home ](https://msaied.com) [ Projects ](https://msaied.com/projects) [ Articles ](https://msaied.com/articles) [ Certificates ](https://msaied.com/certificates) [ Contact ](https://msaied.com#contact-section) [ ](https://github.com/EG-Mohamed) [ Home ](https://msaied.com) [ Projects ](https://msaied.com/projects) [ Articles ](https://msaied.com/articles) [ Certificates ](https://msaied.com/certificates) [ Contact ](https://msaied.com#contact-section) [ home ](https://msaied.com) [ articles ](https://msaied.com/articles) Laravel Reverb in Production: Scaling WebSockets, Auth Channels, and Presence at Load On this page 1. [ Why Reverb Changes the WebSocket Story for Laravel ](#why-reverb-changes-the-websocket-story-for-laravel) 2. [ Deployment Architecture ](#deployment-architecture) 3. [ Horizontal Scaling with Redis ](#horizontal-scaling-with-redis) 4. [ Private and Presence Channel Auth ](#private-and-presence-channel-auth) 5. [ Connection Limits and Tuning ](#connection-limits-and-tuning) 6. [ Key Takeaways ](#key-takeaways) ![Laravel Reverb in Production: Scaling WebSockets, Auth Channels, and Presence at Load](https://cdn.msaied.com/684/1c8fcd52449a6596e09ec043b245955f.png) #laravel #websockets #reverb #broadcasting #scaling Laravel Reverb in Production: Scaling WebSockets, Auth Channels, and Presence at Load ======================================================================================= 20 Sep 2026 4 min read ![Mohamed Said](https://cdn.msaied.com/01M22N44A70A5MC2S599JP0MPH.webp) Mohamed Said Table of contents 1. [ 01 Why Reverb Changes the WebSocket Story for Laravel ](#why-reverb-changes-the-websocket-story-for-laravel) 2. [ 02 Deployment Architecture ](#deployment-architecture) 3. [ 03 Horizontal Scaling with Redis ](#horizontal-scaling-with-redis) 4. [ 04 Private and Presence Channel Auth ](#private-and-presence-channel-auth) 5. [ 05 Connection Limits and Tuning ](#connection-limits-and-tuning) 6. [ 06 Key Takeaways ](#key-takeaways) Why Reverb Changes the WebSocket Story for Laravel -------------------------------------------------- Before Reverb, running WebSockets in Laravel meant operating a separate Node.js process (Pusher-compatible servers like Soketi or Laravel Echo Server) alongside your PHP app. Reverb collapses that into a single PHP binary, shares your existing service container, and integrates natively with Laravel's broadcasting system. That simplicity is real — but production deployments surface a set of concerns that the getting-started docs gloss over. --- Deployment Architecture ----------------------- Reverb runs as a long-lived Ratchet/ReactPHP process. It is **not** a traditional PHP-FPM request; it is a persistent server. That changes how you deploy it. ```bash # Start Reverb (production) php artisan reverb:start --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8080 --env=production ``` Manage it with Supervisor so it restarts on failure: ```ini [program:reverb] command=php /var/www/html/artisan reverb:start --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8080 autostart=true autorestart=true stopwaitsecs=10 user=www-data stdout_logfile=/var/log/reverb.log ``` Nginx proxies WebSocket upgrades to Reverb while your normal FPM traffic continues on port 80/443: ```nginx location /app { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade"; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_read_timeout 3600; } ``` --- Horizontal Scaling with Redis ----------------------------- A single Reverb process is bound to one machine. When you scale to multiple app servers, a client connected to server A won't receive events broadcast from server B. The fix is the Redis scaling driver, which uses Pub/Sub to fan out events across all Reverb nodes. ```php // config/reverb.php 'scaling' => [ 'driver' => 'redis', 'connection' => 'default', // your Redis connection from database.php ], ``` Each Reverb node subscribes to the same Redis channel. When your application fires a broadcast event, any node can pick it up and push it to the connected clients it owns. This requires **sticky sessions** at your load balancer (or a session-affinity cookie) so that the WebSocket handshake and subsequent frames always hit the same node. > **Gotcha:** If you skip sticky sessions, the HTTP-based channel auth endpoint (`/broadcasting/auth`) may be handled by a different server than the one holding the WebSocket connection. The auth will succeed, but Reverb on the other node won't have the subscription registered. Always pair Redis scaling with L4/L7 sticky routing. --- Private and Presence Channel Auth --------------------------------- Reverb reuses Laravel's existing `BroadcastServiceProvider` and channel definitions: ```php // routes/channels.php Broadcast::channel('orders.{orderId}', function (User $user, int $orderId) { return $user->can('view', Order::findOrFail($orderId)); }); Broadcast::channel('presence.team.{teamId}', function (User $user, int $teamId) { if ($user->belongsToTeam($teamId)) { return ['id' => $user->id, 'name' => $user->name]; } }); ``` Presence channels return an array on success; that payload becomes the member data visible to all subscribers. Returning `false` or `null` denies access. On the frontend with Echo: ```javascript window.Echo.join(`presence.team.${teamId}`) .here(members => console.log('Online:', members)) .joining(member => console.log('Joined:', member.name)) .leaving(member => console.log('Left:', member.name)); ``` --- Connection Limits and Tuning ---------------------------- Reverb exposes connection limits per application in `config/reverb.php`. Under load, the bottleneck is usually open file descriptors, not CPU. Raise the OS limit: ```bash # /etc/security/limits.conf www-data soft nofile 65535 www-data hard nofile 65535 ``` Also tune the `max_connections` and `max_request_size` settings: ```php 'apps' => [[ 'id' => env('REVERB_APP_ID'), 'key' => env('REVERB_APP_KEY'), 'secret' => env('REVERB_APP_SECRET'), 'options' => [ 'host' => env('REVERB_HOST', '0.0.0.0'), 'port' => env('REVERB_PORT', 8080), 'max_message_size' => 10_000, // bytes ], ]], ``` --- Key Takeaways ------------- - Reverb is a persistent PHP process — manage it with Supervisor, not FPM. - Use the Redis scaling driver for multi-node deployments; pair it with sticky sessions at the load balancer. - Channel auth runs through your normal Laravel HTTP stack — policies and gates work as expected. - Presence channel member data is the array returned from the channel callback, not a separate API call. - Raise OS file descriptor limits before you hit connection ceilings in production. - `max_message_size` is your first line of defense against oversized payloads crashing the event loop. Found this useful? [ ](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmsaied.com%2Farticles%2Flaravel-reverb-in-production-scaling-websockets-auth-channels-and-presence-at-load&text=Laravel+Reverb+in+Production%3A+Scaling+WebSockets%2C+Auth+Channels%2C+and+Presence+at+Load) [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmsaied.com%2Farticles%2Flaravel-reverb-in-production-scaling-websockets-auth-channels-and-presence-at-load) Frequently Asked Questions ---------------------------- 3 questions Q01 Can Reverb replace Pusher entirely, including the client-side SDK? Yes. Reverb implements the Pusher protocol, so Laravel Echo works unchanged. You only update the broadcaster config to point at your Reverb host instead of Pusher's servers. No client-side code changes are required. Q02 Does Reverb support SSL termination directly? The recommended approach is to terminate TLS at Nginx or a load balancer and proxy plain WebSocket traffic to Reverb on a local port. Reverb can handle TLS natively via its `tls` options, but offloading to a reverse proxy is simpler to certificate-manage in production. Q03 What happens to connected clients during a Reverb restart or deployment? Existing WebSocket connections are dropped when the process restarts. Echo's reconnection logic will re-establish them automatically within a few seconds. For zero-downtime deployments, run two Reverb processes behind the load balancer and drain one before restarting it. 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