Before installing Laravel, make sure your system meets the following basic requirements.

PHP Version

Laravel requires:

PHP 8.2 or higher

You can check your PHP version using:

php -v
            

Composer

Laravel uses Composer to manage project dependencies.

Check Composer installation:

composer -v
            

Required PHP Extensions

The following PHP extensions must be enabled:

• BCMath
• Ctype
• cURL
• DOM
• Fileinfo
• JSON
• Mbstring
• OpenSSL
• PCRE
• PDO
• Tokenizer
• XML
• ZIP

You can view installed extensions with:

php -m
            

Database

Laravel supports multiple databases, including:

• MySQL
• MariaDB
• PostgreSQL
• SQLite

Web Server

Laravel works with:

• Apache
• Nginx

Node.js and NPM (Optional)

If you're using Vite, Tailwind CSS, React, or Vue, install:

Node.js 20+ NPM

Check versions:

node -v
npm -v
            

Conclusion

To run Laravel smoothly, ensure you have PHP 8.2+, Composer, the required PHP extensions, a supported database, and a web server such as Apache or Nginx. For modern frontend development, Node.js and NPM are also recommended.