Default Laravel 20 MB RAM Memory Usage? It's a Windows Problem.

I've seen on various forums people asking why the default empty Laravel installation sometimes shows 20 MB memory usage in Debugbar without any DB queries or heavy functionality. The short answer: "Don't debug, it's normal."

On forums, people discuss and try to find the source of the problem until the author mentions the web server they are running. In all those cases, it's about the Windows operating system.

I've seen all web servers being mentioned: XAMPP, Wamp, Laragon, and others. All of them report the 20 MB usage just by default, with any Laravel starting installations.

On Mac and other operating systems, the default normal memory usage for such Laravel pages should be 5-6 MB.

So, the solution on Windows would be to use Laravel Sail or Docker Desktop, and then inside that virtual machine, the memory usage would be significantly lower.