How to Run Laravel Queues in Production Using Supervisor

If your Laravel queue works locally but nothing happens in production, it’s almost always because there’s no worker running. queue:work needs to run continuously, and SSH sessions don’t count.

The correct solution is Supervisor.

Install Supervisor

On Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install supervisor

sudo apt update
sudo apt install supervisor

Make sure it’s running:

sudo systemctl status supervisor

sudo systemctl status supervisor

Create a queue worker config

Create a config file:

sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-queue.conf

sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/laravel-queue.conf

Example config to run on a Redis queue:

[program:laravel-queue]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=/usr/bin/php8.2 /var/www/myapp/artisan queue:work redis --sleep=3 --tries=3 --timeout=90
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=2
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/myapp/storage/logs/queue.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

[program:laravel-queue]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=/usr/bin/php8.2 /var/www/myapp/artisan queue:work redis --sleep=3 --tries=3 --timeout=90
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
numprocs=2
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/myapp/storage/logs/queue.log
stopwaitsecs=3600

What matters here:

• numprocs = number of workers
• --tries and --timeout protect you from bad jobs
• stdout_logfile is essential for debugging

Start the workers

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
sudo supervisorctl start laravel-queue:*

sudo supervisorctl reread
sudo supervisorctl update
sudo supervisorctl start laravel-queue:*

… and check their status:

sudo supervisorctl status

sudo supervisorctl status

Laravel config

In .env

QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis

QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis

… and if you’re using database queues, don’t forget:

php artisan queue:table
php artisan migrate

php artisan queue:table
php artisan migrate

Restart workers on deploy

Workers don’t reload code automatically. Always run:

php artisan queue:restart

php artisan queue:restart

Skipping this is a classic production bug, and your queue workers won’t be using your deployed codebase.

Common issues

• Jobs stuck → worker not running or wrong queue
• Jobs failing instantly → PHP version mismatch
• No logs → wrong permissions on storage/logs

Once Supervisor is in place, queues stop being fragile and start being boring – which is exactly what you want.