@Robstar you can try it with any external Api, try call this Get "https://dog.ceo/api/breeds/list/all" with Postman and with a plain Laravel api and laravel httpclient, you should see that Postman first call is about 400ms and from second call on around 30ms, with Laravel instead I see 600/800ms for the first call and about 80ms from second call on, what numbers you get instead?

I mean you have to call laravel from a client using a route example "/dogs" , then from a controller you use Http Client and call https://dog.ceo/api/breeds/list/all and return without modifications the json to you client, there measure the ms passed.

I dont' mean timings you measure from when you start the HttpClient and get the response, rather the full cycle of getting the data from external api and present it to the user like Postman does.

Working with Postman