How I Fixed a PHP Version Mismatch on Hostinger Shared Hosting (And What Actually Made It Work)

I spent way too long staring at this error. If you're here, you probably are too. Your requirements could not be resolved to an installable set of packages. Problem 1 - Root composer.json requires php ^8.3 but your php version (8.2.30) does not satisfy that requirement. My Laravel 13 app needed PHP 8.3. My Hostinger server was running 8.2. composer install refused to budge. Here's exactly what happened and the one-liner that fixed it. The Setup I was deploying a Laravel 13 + Inertia + React app to Hostinger shared hosting. Laravel 13 requires PHP 8.3 minimum — and so do its locked Symfony 8.x and PHPUnit 12.x dependencies. My composer.lock had been generated on a local machine with PHP 8.3, but Hostinger's CLI was defaulting to 8.2. The hPanel showed PHP 8.3 selected under PHP Configuration . The website itself was running fine on 8.3. But SSH? Still on 8.2. $ php -v PHP 8.2.30 ( cli ) That disconnect — hPanel vs. CLI — is the trap. What I Tried First composer update My first instinct was to just let Composer resolve newer compatible versions: composer update No luck. The root composer.json itself declared "php": "^8.3" , so Composer refused before even touching the lock file. The PHP constraint wasn't just in dependencies — it was in my own project requirements. composer install --ignore-platform-reqs This flag skips platform checks and forces the install anyway. It works , but it's a lie — you end up with packages that may behave incorrectly or fail at runtime because they genuinely require PHP 8.3 features. Not a real fix. Changing PHP in hPanel Hostinger's control panel has a PHP version switcher under Hosting → Manage → PHP Configuration . I had already set this to 8.3. This controls the web server / FPM version — what runs your .php files in the browser. It does not change what php points to in your SSH terminal. That's the key distinction most tutorials miss. What Actually Fixed It Hostinger installs multiple PHP versions in parallel. They live in /opt/alt/ph