How to Retrieve the Last Inserted ID in Laravel Eloquent

Retrieving the laravel last inserted id sounds like one question but has two very different answers depending on context: if you just inserted the row, Eloquent already handed you the ID on the model instance; if you need the latest record in a table without having inserted it yourself, the right pattern is latest('id')->first(). This guide walks through both paths, flags the Model::all()->last() anti-pattern that silently scales to millions of rows, and covers the raw-PDO fallback for edge cases.

Last verified: 2026-04-21 on Laravel 11 with PHP 8.3 and MySQL 8.0. Originally published 2024-03-17, rewritten and updated 2026-04-21.

TL;DR

Just inserted? Read $model->id from the saved instance — save() and create() populate it for you. Need the most recent row without having inserted it? Use Model::latest('id')->first() or equivalently Model::orderBy('id', 'desc')->first(). Never use Model::all()->last() or Model::get()->last() — they load every row into memory first.

If you just inserted the row, use the instance

The standard, idiomatic path: when you insert through Eloquent, the returned model already has its primary key set. No extra query needed.

$post = Post::create([
    'title' => 'Hello',
    'body'  => '...',
]);

$id = $post->id;   // auto-populated by Eloquent

Same with manual saves:

$post = new Post();
$post->title = 'Hello';
$post->save();

$id = $post->id;

This is the pattern you should reach for 99% of the time. Issuing a second SELECT to fetch an ID you just wrote is wasted work and introduces a race condition if concurrent inserts are possible.

If you need the latest record, use latest / orderBy

Different problem: you’re an admin dashboard, background job, or second request, and you want the most recent row in a table. Four equivalent forms all compile to ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1:

Model::orderBy('id', 'desc')->first();
Model::latest('id')->first();
Model::latest('id')->limit(1)->get();
Model::orderBy('id', 'desc')->limit(1)->get();

latest('id') is syntactic sugar for orderBy('id', 'desc'). Both ->first() and ->limit(1)->get() return exactly one database row; the difference is first() returns a single model (or null), while get() returns a Collection containing one model. Use first() unless downstream code already expects a Collection.

For the oldest row, flip the direction:

Model::orderBy('id', 'asc')->first();

Anti-pattern: Model::all()->last() / Model::get()->last()

This looks innocent and returns the right answer on a small table:

// DO NOT DO THIS
Post::all()->last();
Post::get()->last();

The problem is where the last() happens. all() issues a SELECT * with no LIMIT, hydrates every row into an Eloquent model inside a Laravel Collection, and then Collection’s last() picks the last element in PHP. On a production table with a million rows, that’s a million hydrated models to read one ID — the query that was 2 ms becomes 30 seconds and an out-of-memory crash.

The fix is to push the “last” into SQL via ORDER BY ... DESC LIMIT 1, which is exactly what latest('id')->first() does.

Query builder: insertGetId()

Not using Eloquent and writing through the query builder instead? Use insertGetId() — it runs the insert and returns the new auto-increment ID in one call:

$id = DB::table('posts')->insertGetId([
    'title'      => 'Hello',
    'body'       => '...',
    'created_at' => now(),
    'updated_at' => now(),
]);

No separate SELECT, no race conditions. If your insert has a different primary key column, pass it as the second argument: insertGetId($data, 'uuid').

Raw PDO fallback: DB::getPdo()->lastInsertId()

For the rare case where you ran a raw DB::insert or executed a prepared statement through DB::statement and can’t rework the code to use Eloquent or insertGetId:

DB::insert('insert into posts (title, body) values (?, ?)', ['Hi', '...']);
$id = DB::getPdo()->lastInsertId();

PDO’s lastInsertId() returns the auto-increment value generated by the most recent INSERT on the same connection. It works for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL (with a sequence name) and SQLite. The connection-scope caveat matters: if your code switches connections between the insert and the read, you’ll get the wrong value or zero.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• How to Install Laravel on Ubuntu — set up Laravel 11 before you query anything.
• Best Way to Insert or Update Records in Laravel Eloquent — upsert patterns that also populate $model->id.
• How to Check if a Record Exists in Laravel — when you only need existence, not the ID.
• Laravel Eloquent orderBy — the ordering clause latest() is sugar for.

References

Official Laravel Eloquent docs (inserts, ordering, retrieving models): laravel.com/docs/eloquent. Query builder insertGetId and ordering: laravel.com/docs/queries.