When starting a new Laravel, Inertia.js, and React project, you immediately face a core authentication choice: Laravel Breeze or Laravel Jetstream. Picking the wrong one means either rewriting too much code or fighting against features you do not need.

• The key differences between Breeze and Jetstream
• How routing and controllers look in an Inertia setup
• When to choose minimal code over advanced features
• Common pitfalls when starting an auth-backed app

Understanding the Two Contenders

Laravel Breeze is a minimal, simple starting point for all of Laravel's authentication features. It gives you login, registration, password reset, email verification, and password confirmation without any extra bloat.

Laravel Jetstream is a more robust application scaffold. It includes everything Breeze has, plus two-factor authentication, team management, API tokens, and browser session management out of the box.

The Code Difference in Inertia

In a Laravel and Inertia setup, both tools pass data from your controllers directly to your React components. Here is how a standard login controller handles the request using Breeze.

This controller validates the incoming login request and authenticates the user session.

public function store(LoginRequest $request): RedirectResponse
{
    $request->authenticate();
    $request->session()->regenerate();
    return redirect()->intended(RouteServiceProvider::HOME);
}

The key takeaway is that Breeze keeps your backend controllers lean and lets you handle UI logic directly inside your React components.

Common mistakes

A common mistake is choosing Jetstream just because you think you might need teams or API tokens later. If your app does not require multi-tenant team management on day one, Jetstream will slow you down with complex database migrations and extra UI components you have to maintain.

Another mistake is heavily modifying the default vendor views instead of publishing them. Always use artisan commands to publish the frontend files so you can easily customize your React components.

Open your terminal right now and run composer require laravel/breeze --dev followed by php artisan breeze:install react to start your next project with a clean, manageable slate.