Alternatives to Laragon
A lightweight, portable local development environment for PHP, Node.js and other web stacks on Windows. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Laragon
A lightweight, portable local development environment for PHP, Node.js and other web stacks on Windows.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Laragon.
XAMPP
Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl packaged as one local development stack.
XAMPP is free and open source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, bundling Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl, though its component versions lag upstream releases.
Laravel Herd
A native PHP and Laravel development environment for Windows and macOS with PHP and nginx included.
Laravel Herd runs natively on Windows and macOS with PHP, nginx and Composer included, but it focuses on PHP and Laravel and puts database services in the paid Pro tier.
MAMP
A local web server environment with Apache or Nginx, MySQL and PHP for macOS and Windows.
MAMP runs on macOS and Windows with a choice of Apache or Nginx plus MySQL, but per-project hosts and one-click CMS installs need MAMP PRO.
Local
A desktop app that sets up and runs WordPress sites on your own computer for development.
Local runs on Windows, macOS and Linux with one-click WordPress sites and SSL, but it handles only WordPress, not general PHP or Node.js projects.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
PHP
A general-purpose scripting language and interpreter especially suited to web development.
Composer
Dependency manager for PHP projects.
DBngin
A free desktop app for starting local PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB and Redis servers with one click.
mkcert
A zero-config command-line tool that creates locally trusted HTTPS certificates for development.
Expose
A tunneling service with an open-source client that gives local sites a public URL.
Docker Compose
A command-line tool that defines and runs multi-container applications from a single YAML file.
