What is Laravel Sanctum used for?

Laravel Sanctum provides lightweight API token authentication and SPA session management, perfect for securing Laravel APIs without OAuth complexity.

How to install Laravel Sanctum in Laravel 11?

Run `composer require laravel/sanctum`, `php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Laravel\Sanctum\SanctumServiceProvider"`, then `php artisan migrate`.

Sanctum for simple personal tokens and SPAs; Passport for full OAuth2 with refresh tokens and third-party auth.

🗄️ Databases & Backend

Tutorials gloss over auth until your API bleeds users. Sanctum fixes that – lightweight, built-in, and ready for the token-hungry future of dev.

theAIcatchup Apr 10, 2026 4 min read

Sanctum delivers production-ready token auth with abilities, revocation, and multi-tenant support out of the box. 𝕏
Skip OAuth bloat for most APIs – Sanctum's hashed tokens and middleware scale effortlessly. 𝕏
Essential for AI-era backends, enabling secure agent access without complexity. 𝕏

Published by

Ship faster. Build smarter.

#API Authentication #Laravel 11 #Laravel Sanctum #Personal Access Tokens #Token Auth

Get the best Developer Tools stories of the week in your inbox — no noise, no spam.

Originally reported by dev.to