How teams use Bref to scale
Discover how teams use Bref to scale their PHP applications with serverless. From reducing costs to improving performance, serverless is simplifying the way developers build and deploy applications.
Deploy, monitor, and run
PHP serverless on AWS
When one server is no longer enough and Kubernetes feels too much, go serverless.
Get the reliability and insane scalability of AWS and Lambda without devops or AWS expertise.
Deploy in one command, monitor from an intuitive dashboard, and manage permissions easily. Bref Cloud makes AWS and serverless accessible and simple with expert support built-in.
Choosing infrastructure is usually a compromise between: reliable, powerful, or simple.
Pick two.
Building advanced infrastructure yourself requires expertise and time. There are also really cool PaaS out there, but they don't have the same track record as major cloud providers.
Bref Cloud goes for all three.
- Reliable: your apps are hosted on AWS, the most reliable cloud provider in the world. More specifically, they run serverless on AWS Lambda: high availability, self-healing, and extremely secure environments out of the box. Bref itself is 8 years-old, open-source, and battle-tested running the most critical apps. Even banks run on Bref (opens in a new tab).
- Powerful: Run PHP applications at virtually unlimited scale using serverless. Get everything your application needs out of the box: databases, queues, storage, caches, cron, CDN, event buses, logging, metrics… If you fancy, you can also use the entire AWS ecosystem without limitations.
- Simple: Bref Cloud makes the power of AWS accessible to all. Deploy with a single command, monitor from an intuitive dashboard, and manage your team without AWS IAM complexity. Perfect for PHP developers who want to build, not configure.
Features
Bref vs Bref Cloud
Feature comparison
Features
Hosting
Bref
Bref Cloud
AWS Lambda in your AWS account
AWS Lambda in your AWS account
High-availability
AWS Lambda runs your app redundantly in multiple data centers and automatically replaces instances that fail.
Bref
Bref Cloud
Yes
Yes
Laravel and Symfony integrations
Bref
Bref Cloud
Yes
Yes
Deployment
Simple serverless.yml configuration
Bref
Bref Cloud
Yes
Yes
Extensible via custom CloudFormation
Bref
Bref Cloud
Yes
Yes
Deploy multiple environments (prod, staging…)
Bref
Bref Cloud
Yes
Yes
Simplified creation and management of databases
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Yes
Simplified creation of private networks
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Coming soon
AWS deployment security
Bref
Bref Cloud
Your responsibility
Create a fine-tuned IAM role and use it via access keys (insecure), or SSO roles, or OIDC.
Automatic
No direct AWS access needed, no action necessary. Bref Cloud transparently creates short-lived access keys.
Operations
Applications overview
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Use the AWS console and switch between AWS services, regions, and AWS accounts.
Yes
All applications in one place.
Logs viewer
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
AWS CloudWatch (advanced)
Yes
Search logs or view them in real-time.
Metrics
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
AWS CloudWatch (advanced)
Yes
Queue jobs management
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Yes
Secrets management
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
AWS SSM Parameter Store
Yes
S3 files management
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
AWS S3 console
Yes
Healthchecks
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Yes
Laravel-only for now.
Security & Access management
Team member permissions
Bref
Bref Cloud
Your responsibility
Create IAM roles with fine-tuned permissions (advanced), or use "administrator access" (simple, but very insecure). Then give access to team members via AWS access keys (simple but insecure) or via IAM Identity Center (advanced).
Yes
Invite teammates to Bref Cloud with read-only, write, or admin access. No AWS access needed.
Strong isolation between environments
Bref
Bref Cloud
Your responsibility
Create separate AWS accounts (e.g. prod, dev…). Then, set up AWS Organizations and IAM Identity Center so that team members can access them securely via "IAM assume role".
Yes
Create separate AWS accounts (e.g. prod, dev…). Then access them in one place via Bref Cloud.
Audit log
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
AWS CloudTrail (advanced)
Yes
Support
Priority bugfixes on GitHub
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Yes
Expert AWS support
Bref
Bref Cloud
No
Yes
Feature comparison
Features
| Feature | Bref tier | Bref Cloud tier |
|---|---|---|
Hosting | AWS Lambda in your AWS account | AWS Lambda in your AWS account |
Real-time scaling AWS Lambda scales up/down automatically in a second or less. | Yes | Yes |
High-availability AWS Lambda runs your app redundantly in multiple data centers and automatically replaces instances that fail. | Yes | Yes |
PHP runtime for AWS Lambda | Yes | Yes |
Laravel and Symfony integrations | Yes | Yes |
Deployment
| Feature | Bref tier | Bref Cloud tier |
|---|---|---|
Simple serverless.yml configuration | Yes | Yes |
Extensible via custom CloudFormation | Yes | Yes |
Deploy multiple environments (prod, staging…) | Yes | Yes |
Simple deployments from GitHub Actions | No | Yes |
Simplified creation and management of databases | No | Yes |
Simplified creation of private networks | No | Coming soon |
AWS deployment security | Your responsibility Create a fine-tuned IAM role and use it via access keys (insecure), or SSO roles, or OIDC. | Automatic No direct AWS access needed, no action necessary. Bref Cloud transparently creates short-lived access keys. |
Operations
| Feature | Bref tier | Bref Cloud tier |
|---|---|---|
Applications overview | No Use the AWS console and switch between AWS services, regions, and AWS accounts. | Yes All applications in one place. |
Logs viewer | No AWS CloudWatch (advanced) | Yes Search logs or view them in real-time. |
Metrics | No AWS CloudWatch (advanced) | Yes |
Queue jobs management | No | Yes |
Secrets management | No AWS SSM Parameter Store | Yes |
S3 files management | No AWS S3 console | Yes |
Healthchecks | No | Yes Laravel-only for now. |
Security & Access management
| Feature | Bref tier | Bref Cloud tier |
|---|---|---|
Team member permissions | Your responsibility Create IAM roles with fine-tuned permissions (advanced), or use "administrator access" (simple, but very insecure). Then give access to team members via AWS access keys (simple but insecure) or via IAM Identity Center (advanced). | Yes Invite teammates to Bref Cloud with read-only, write, or admin access. No AWS access needed. |
Strong isolation between environments | Your responsibility Create separate AWS accounts (e.g. prod, dev…). Then, set up AWS Organizations and IAM Identity Center so that team members can access them securely via "IAM assume role". | Yes Create separate AWS accounts (e.g. prod, dev…). Then access them in one place via Bref Cloud. |
Audit log | No AWS CloudTrail (advanced) | Yes |
Support
| Feature | Bref tier | Bref Cloud tier |
|---|---|---|
Priority bugfixes on GitHub | No | Yes |
Expert AWS support | No | Yes |
Pricing
A plan for every team
Indie maker
For solo devs who want to focus on building instead of hosting.
$15/month
AWS cloud costs are not included
Start free trial- 1 user
- 2 applications
- 1 AWS account
- Unlimited deployments
- Unlimited environments
- Slack + email support & consulting
Startup
For small dev teams that want to scale their applications easily.
$39/month
AWS cloud costs are not included
Start free trial- 5 users
- 5 applications
- 3 AWS accounts
- Unlimited deployments
- Unlimited environments
- Slack + email support & consulting
Team
A plan for businesses with multiple dev teams.
$99/month
AWS cloud costs are not included
Start free trial- 15 users
- 50 applications
- Unlimited AWS accounts
- Unlimited deployments
- Unlimited environments
- Slack + email support & consulting
Enterprise
Dedicated support and infrastructure for your company.
Custom
AWS cloud costs are not included
Get in touch- Unlimited users
- Unlimited applications
- Unlimited AWS accounts
- Unlimited deployments
- Unlimited environments
- Priority support
- Zoom consulting
- Tailored AWS infrastructure
- Self-hosted Bref Cloud
- Access to Bref Cloud source code
All prices are excluding taxes. You can remove VAT on checkout by adding your VAT ID.
Your cloud, your control
No markup, no lock-in
Bref Cloud deploys your applications to your AWS account, with zero markup on AWS prices. With serverless pay-as-you-go pricing, your hosting bill from AWS could be as low as $0. Learn more about serverless hosting costs.
Under the hood, Bref Cloud uses standard AWS CloudFormation and follows AWS best practices (opens in a new tab), meaning you're never locked in. You can eject from Bref Cloud at any point if you prefer to manage the infrastructure yourself. You are not even locked in AWS Lambda (opens in a new tab).
Treezor: a serverless banking platform
Treezor, a banking-as-a-service platform processing millions of transactions daily, successfully migrated its legacy PHP application to serverless using AWS Lambda and Bref. This transformation improved scalability, reduced response times by 2.5x, cut production alerts by up to 3x, and reduced transaction timeouts 10x.
How Craft CMS built Craft Cloud
Craft CMS built Craft Cloud, a serverless hosting platform to run Craft CMS projects at scale using AWS and Cloudflare. It uses Bref and AWS Lambda to host PHP applications, with each customer project isolated in its own environment and container. With over 310 million HTTP requests handled in a month, Craft Cloud proves that running PHP serverless is fast, scalable, and production-ready.
Expert AWS support built-in
Hi! I'm Matthieu, PHP enthusiast, open-source developer (opens in a new tab) since 2003, and AWS Serverless Hero (opens in a new tab). After years of setting up servers and containers, I moved to serverless and started Bref 8 years ago.
Since 2017, I've built countless projects on AWS Lambda, but also helped many others do the same. I've seen a lot, from small projects, to large legacy monoliths, or high-traffic microservices. I blog (opens in a new tab), talk (opens in a new tab), and teach (opens in a new tab) about serverless.
Bref Cloud is more than just software. It comes with expert AWS support to pick the best infrastructure for your projects.
Got questions? Get in touch via email, Slack (opens in a new tab), or Zoom (opens in a new tab).
Frequently asked questions
Looking for the docs? Check out the Bref Cloud documentation.
Can’t find the answer you’re looking for? Reach out via email.
- What is a considered an "application"?
- Technically speaking, an application is a deployment unit, i.e. a CloudFormation stack. In more common terms, an application is a single PHP project. It can for example be a Laravel, Symfony, or any other PHP application. One application can be deployed to multiple environments (dev, staging, production, etc.), but it is still considered a single application. Note that some applications have a JS frontend (like a React app) and a PHP backend: if both are deployed together in a single config file, they are considered a single application.
- Do I get invoices?
- Yes, you will receive an invoice by email after your purchase.
- Can I use AWS credits?
- Yes. Since applications run in your AWS account, you can use your AWS credits for the usage of AWS services.
- What's your refund policy?
- We generally offer refunds within 14 days of purchase, but please email us to contact@bref.sh if you aren't happy with Bref Cloud and we'll find a solution.
- What are the terms of service and privacy policy?
- Here are the links to the terms of service and the privacy policy of Bref Cloud.