Building a multi-tenant SaaS is as much about data isolation as it is about features. The two dominant strategies are a database-per-tenant model and a shared database with a tenant column.
The cheapest mistake you can make is treating tenancy as an afterthought. Retrofitting isolation later is painful and risky.
Choosing a strategy
For most products, a shared schema with a tenant_id scoped through a global scope is the fastest path to ship — and it scales further than most teams assume.
:::tip Start with a shared schema. Migrate hot tenants to dedicated databases only when the metrics justify it. :::
A clean tenant scope
// app/Models/Concerns/TenantScoped.php
trait TenantScoped
{
protected static function bootTenantScoped(): void
{
static::addGlobalScope('tenant', function ($query) {
$query->where('tenant_id', auth()->tenantId());
});
}
}
<p>This guarantees every query leaving your models is scoped, so a missed <code>where</code> in a controller can never leak another tenant’s rows.</p>
<h2 id="strategy-comparison">Strategy comparison</h2>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Strategy</th>
<th>Isolation</th>
<th>Operational cost</th>
<th>Best for</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Shared schema</td>
<td>Low</td>
<td>Low</td>
<td>Most SaaS</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Schema per tenant</td>
<td>Medium</td>
<td>Medium</td>
<td>Regulated industries</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>DB per tenant</td>
<td>High</td>
<td>High</td>
<td>Enterprise</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 id="wrapping-up">Wrapping up</h2>
<p>Isolation is a property of your data layer, not your UI. Get the scope right once and every feature inherits it for free. See the <a href="#">POS case study</a> for the production numbers behind this approach.</p>
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