Simple and scalable PHP with serverless

Simplify your infrastructure and scale with ease.

Bref is an open-source project that helps you go serverless on AWS with PHP.

Documentation

View on GitHub

serverless.yml

service: demo
 
provider:
    name: aws
 
functions:
    web:
        runtime: php-82-fpm
        handler: public/index.php
        events:
            - httpApi: '*'

42,264,624,800

requests, jobs, and messages handled with Bref in the last 30 days

Why Bref? Why serverless?

We're in 2025. Applications should scale automatically. Hosting should be reliable and cost-efficient. Infrastructure should accelerate development, not consume our time.

Bref deploys PHP applications to AWS Lambda and sets up the rest of the infrastructure using serverless services.

Simple.: Instead of setting up and maintaining servers, define your application in a simple serverless.yml file. Then deploy to AWS by running serverless deploy.
Scalable.: Bref provides open-source runtimes to run PHP on AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda runs your code redundantly across data centers and scales in real-time. All automatically. Handle 1 request/second or 1000 with the same code.
Cost-efficient.: Instead of paying for servers that are idle most of the time, pay for the time the code is actually running. The AWS free tier even provides about 1 million free requests per month. Play with the serverless costs calculator.
Extensible.: Bref uses standard CloudFormation under the hood: you can use everything AWS has to offer. If you are a cloud expert, Bref also works with AWS CDK, Terraform, and more.

$ serverless deploy

Deploying demo to stage dev (us-east-1)

✔ Service deployed to stack demo-dev (31s)

endpoint: https://yti4le2q5.lambda-url.us-east-1.on.aws/

functions:

web: demo-dev-web (750 KB)

cron: demo-dev-cron (750 KB)

worker: demo-dev-worker (750 KB)

Use cases

Serverless means whatever you choose it to mean.

Run PHP as usual, like on any server. Except it scales (almost) infinitely and you don't maintain the infrastructure.
Lift-and-shift existing apps or build new ones with your favorite framework.

Websites: Run PHP websites with Laravel, Symfony or any other framework, with a worldwide CDN and your custom domain.
HTTP APIs: REST or GraphQL APIs deployed in seconds. Need more performance? Enable Laravel Octane or the Symfony equivalent.
CLI commands: Run DB migrations, admin commands, or any other CLI command from your machine or your CI/CD.
Cron tasks: Every day, every hour, every minute… Run CLI scripts, Symfony Console commands, or the Laravel Scheduler.

Or go the extreme opposite: build event-driven microservices with infinitely scalable cloud services like SQS and EventBridge.

Or anything in between, that works too.

Job queues: Run 1000 jobs with 1 worker in 1000 seconds, or with 1000 workers in 1 second. It's just as simple and it costs the same. SQS invokes your code directly, no long-running process to maintain.
Event-driven microservices: Decouple and scale microservices without container madness. Send messages to EventBridge and let it invoke your PHP classes directly. No integration to write.
File processing: S3 can invoke a PHP class whenever a new file is uploaded. Resize images, convert videos, generate PDFs…
WebSockets: AWS API Gateway manages the WebSocket connections for you. Send messages to your users in real-time.