What are the hidden costs of hiring a Laravel freelancer?

Several costs are commonly underestimated. Your own time as de facto project manager is a real cost. The risk and cost of the freelancer disappearing mid project, leaving you to find and onboard a replacement while the project stalls. The absence of code review and QA, which can mean bugs and security issues reaching production. Onboarding a replacement to undocumented code. Rework when the single perspective missed something a team would have caught. For small tasks these risks are minor; for substantial projects they can exceed the per hour saving many times over.