The N+1 query problem is the most common performance issue in Laravel applications, and it's the easiest to introduce accidentally. A developer adds $post->author->name in a Blade template, and suddenly a page that loaded 10 posts now executes 11 database queries instead of 2. Scale that to 100 posts and you have 101 queries. Scale to a thousand and your database server is on fire.

What makes N+1 problems particularly insidious is that they're invisible during development. Your local database with 20 records responds instantly whether you execute 1 query or 100.…