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MySQL 8.0 is entering end-of-life in April 2026. We recommend upgrading all Laravel MySQL 8.0 databases to 8.4 as soon as possible. Laravel Cloud handles the upgrade for you, but the upgrade is irreversible, so take a few minutes to prepare before starting.

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Before you upgrade

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1. Back up your database

Before you do anything, create a manual backup of your database. If something goes wrong, this backup is your only way to recover.
  1. Go to Organization > Resources > Databases.
  2. Click your Laravel MySQL 8.0 database cluster.
  3. Find the Backups section on the cluster page.
  4. Click New backup.
  5. Give your backup a name and an optional description, then click Create backup.
Learn more about Laravel MySQL backups.

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2. Review core changes between 8.0 and 8.4

Most applications will upgrade without issues, but check the following: Foreign key strictness. Foreign key constraints now require a unique key on the parent table’s referenced column, not just any index. If your schema has foreign keys referencing non-unique indexes, the upgrade will fail. Check your schema and make sure all referenced columns have a unique key or primary key. New reserved keywords. MySQL 8.4 reserves several new words, including MANUAL, PARALLEL, QUALIFY, and TABLESAMPLE. If you use any of these as unquoted table or column names, queries will break. Either quote or rename those identifiers. FLOAT or DOUBLE with AUTO_INCREMENT. MySQL 8.0 deprecated this combination, and MySQL 8.4 removes it entirely. If any of your tables have a column matching this combination, the upgrade will fail. Check with:
If you get results, convert those columns to an integer type (for example, BIGINT) before proceeding. For the complete list of changes, see the MySQL 8.4 upgrade documentation.

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Performing the upgrade

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3. Run the upgrade

Upgrading to MySQL 8.4 is irreversible.
You can start the upgrade from the Laravel Cloud dashboard:
  1. Go to Organization > Resources > Databases.
  2. Find your Laravel MySQL 8.0 database.
  3. Click Upgrade on the yellow banner below the database.
  4. Confirm your upgrade.
The process takes up to a few minutes. Your database will be briefly unavailable during this time. We recommend running the upgrade during a low-traffic window.

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4. Verify your application

After the upgrade completes, confirm that your application is connecting and behaving normally.

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After the upgrade

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5. Delete your backup (optional)

Once you’re confident everything is working, you can delete the backup from step 1 to free up storage.
  1. Go to Organization > Resources > Databases.
  2. Click your database cluster (now on 8.4).
  3. Find the Backups section on the cluster page.
  4. Click … next to your manual backup and select Delete.