Laracon US 2025 recap: Pest 4 and why it matters for your website

I attended Laracon US 2025 and watched Nuno Maduro announce Pest 4, the newest version of the PHP testing framework many of our projects use. In simple terms, Pest is the tool we use to automatically check that your site works. It runs repeatable tests so we catch issues early and ship with confidence.

What’s new in Pest 4

• Modern browser testing with Playwright
  Browser tests are automated scripts that act like a real user. They click buttons, fill forms, and check that pages behave correctly on different devices. Pest 4 makes this fast, stable, and easy to set up.
  
  

• Smarter smoke tests
  A single test can sweep your key pages, fail if there are JavaScript errors or messy console logs, and confirm that a page not only loads but actually works.
  
  

• Visual testing
  Pest can take screenshots and compare them over time to catch layout or style changes. This helps prevent design regressions across desktop and mobile.
  
  

• Laravel-first debugging and coverage
  Pest 4 plugs into Laravel’s testing features, making failures easier to diagnose. Coverage reports show which parts of the app your tests have exercised.
  
  

• Speed on laptops and CI
  Tests run in parallel locally and split smartly on continuous integration, which keeps feedback fast and releases frequent.

How this compares to Dusk

Laravel Dusk is Laravel’s older browser testing tool. It relies on ChromeDriver and matching browser versions, which can be fiddly to maintain on developers’ machines and on CI. The result is more setup and more time spent keeping the test environment in sync. It’s also notoriously slow, making iteration and testing take much longer.
Pest 4, using Playwright, sidesteps much of that overhead. It brings reliable cross-browser testing, simpler setup, built-in visual comparisons, and faster parallel runs. In practice that means fewer flaky tests, quicker feedback, and broader coverage of real user journeys.

Why clients should care

Fewer surprises before launch

Browser tests catch JavaScript errors, broken interactions, and visual drift that manual checks can miss. Fewer issues reach production and fixes take less time.

Faster feedback loops

Parallel runs keep run times short. Quicker feedback leads to smaller, safer releases and steadier progress on your roadmap.

Clearer diagnostics

Laravel-native tooling and coverage make it easier to see what broke, where it broke, and whether our tests cover the paths your users rely on.

How we will use it on projects

• Selective adoption
  We bring Pest 4 to places where it delivers clear value. Typical targets are high-traffic flows like login, checkout, onboarding, and key dashboards, plus areas where visuals matter such as navigation and forms.
  
  

• Guardrails stay in place
  Changes still go through pull requests, reviews, automated tests, and staged rollouts. Pest 4 adds assurance on top of our existing process.
  
  

The headline for your business

Pest 4 turns comprehensive browser testing into a practical daily habit. You get faster feedback, stronger quality signals, and fewer regressions reaching users, which adds up to smoother releases and a more reliable product.