For years, "PHP on mobile" was a punchline. If you were a Laravel developer and wanted to ship a mobile app, the advice was always the same: go learn React Native, go learn Flutter, go learn Swift or Kotlin. Leave the stack you know and love behind.
Then came NativeBlade - a framework that runs your entire Laravel + Livewire app inside PHP-WASM, wrapped in a native Tauri shell. Real apps, on the App Store and Google Play, written entirely in PHP.
But building the app was only half the problem. The other half was shipping it.
The part nobody talks about
Writing a mobile app is one thing. Compiling it is another kind of pain entirely.
To build a NativeBlade app yourself, you needed Rust installed, the Android SDK and NDK configured, and - for iOS - a Mac with Xcode, signing certificates, and provisioning profiles. That's a wall. A lot of PHP developers hit it and quietly gave up before ever seeing their app on a real device.
Expo solved this exact problem for the React Native world. You don't set up Android Studio or Xcode. You push your code, their build farm compiles it, and you get an .apk and .ipa back. That convenience is a huge reason Expo became the default way to build React Native apps.
PHP developers deserve the same thing. So I built it.
Meet NativeBlade Cloud
NativeBlade Cloud is a managed build farm for NativeBlade apps. You bring your Laravel project. It gives you back native binaries for Android and iOS - no local environment required.
No Rust. No Xcode. No Android Studio. No signing headaches. You stay in PHP the entire time, and the cloud handles the machinery.
Think of it as the Expo for PHP developers.
How it works
The flow is deliberately simple. You connect your GitHub repository, pick what you want, and the cloud does the rest.
1. Connect GitHub. You link the repository of your NativeBlade project. The cloud pulls what it needs to build - nothing more.
2. Choose your build mode. There are three, each for a different moment in your workflow:
Development APK (Android) - Don't want to deal with signing yet? Skip the signing data and the cloud gives you a debug
.apk. Install it on your device and test immediately, no keystore required.Dev Client + Live Reload - Install the dev client once, then run locally:
php artisan nativeblade:serve --host=<your-ip> --port=<port>
Point the dev client at that IP and port, and every Blade change you make shows up on your device instantly through hot reload. Same local network, no rebuild loop. This is where you'll spend most of your development time.
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Production Build - Add your signing data (keystore for Android, distribution certificate and provisioning profile for iOS) and the cloud produces a signed, store-ready
.aab/.apkor.ipa.
3. Ship it. Download the binary and upload it to Google Play or the App Store.
A note on iOS: unlike Android, iOS always requires signing - even for testing on a device. So the "skip signing for a debug build" shortcut applies to Android only. For iOS you'll provide your Apple signing data before the cloud can produce anything installable.
Your signing credentials are sensitive - a leaked distribution certificate can compromise your entire Apple Developer account - so they're encrypted at rest and isolated per account. You stay in control of them.
The free plan: 8 builds a month
Here's the part I'm most happy about. The free plan gives you 8 builds per month, split across Android and iOS.
That's not a crippled trial. Eight builds is enough to genuinely ship an app - you iterate locally with the Portal and hot reload for free, unlimited, and you only spend a build when you're producing an actual store-ready binary. Most apps don't need a production build every day. You build when you have something worth publishing.
For solo developers, side projects, and people just trying NativeBlade for the first time, 8 builds a month means you can go from zero to published without paying a cent.
Why builds aren't instant (and why that's fine)
I'll be honest about the trade-off, because honesty is baked into how NativeBlade is built.
Compiling the Rust native shell takes time. The first build of a project is the slowest because the Rust toolchain compiles everything from scratch. If you've ever used Expo's free tier, you know builds there can sit in a queue for hours. NativeBlade Cloud builds run on dedicated capacity, so you're not fighting thousands of other developers for a slot - but a native build still takes minutes, not seconds.
For context: a native mobile build taking a few minutes is completely normal. Flutter, React Native, and native apps all pay this cost. The difference is you're paying it on someone else's machine instead of setting up a 15GB toolchain on your own.
Built with itself
The most fun part: the infrastructure behind NativeBlade Cloud - the queue with priority lanes, the concurrency control, the credential vault - is orchestrated in Laravel. PHP managing a build farm that compiles PHP apps for mobile.
The same language everyone said "isn't serious enough" runs the whole operation, from the framework to the orchestrator.
What's included
Every NativeBlade app you ship through the cloud has access to the full plugin set, all MIT licensed and included:
- Native camera (photo, video, front/back, on-device crop)
- Push notifications via FCM and APNs directly
- In-app purchases and subscriptions (StoreKit + Play Billing)
- AdMob (rewarded, interstitial, banner, with consent)
- Biometrics, NFC, barcode scanner
- Geolocation, haptics, clipboard, sensors
- Background tasks that run even with the app closed
- SQLite offline-first, persisted to IndexedDB
You write Livewire components. The cloud ships them to the stores. That's the whole pitch.
Who this is for
NativeBlade Cloud is for the Laravel developer who already has a working backend, already knows Blade and Livewire, and doesn't want to learn an entirely new stack just to put an app in someone's hand.
If you know Laravel, you already know how to build a mobile app. You just didn't know it yet.
Try it
The framework is open source and MIT licensed: github.com/NativeBlade/NativeBlade
Install the Portal app from the App Store or Google Play, point it at the demo bundle, and you'll be inside a working Laravel app on your phone in seconds - no PHP, no setup, nothing to install locally.
Then head to nativeblade.dev, sign up for NativeBlade Cloud, use your 8 free builds, and ship something.
PHP on mobile isn't a punchline anymore. It's on the stores. And now shipping it is as easy as git push.
NativeBlade is an open-source framework for building native mobile and desktop apps with Laravel and Livewire. If you build something with it, I'd love to hear what breaks - issues, PRs, and honest feedback all welcome.
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