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Laravel

Your Laravel queue workers keep 8 copies of your app in memory

Each Laravel queue worker and Horizon supervisor loads its own copy of your app, which quickly eats memory on small servers. A package called queue-prefork tries to fix this by sharing opcache across forked workers.

freek.dev11 Nov 2026 · 1 min read · summary

article --summary

The summary

The post explains why every Laravel queue worker and Horizon supervisor ends up holding a separate compiled copy of the application in memory. Because those copies multiply with each worker, the cost becomes significant on smaller servers. To address this, the author introduces queue-prefork, a package that shares opcache across forked worker processes. According to the post, this sharply reduces memory use while leaving job throughput unchanged.

Editorial note: This is a summary of an article first published by freek.dev. The full piece is on their site.

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Topic
Laravel
Source
freek.dev
Published
11 Nov 2026
Format
Curated summary

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