Alternatives to Laravel Herd

A native PHP and Laravel development environment for Windows and macOS with PHP and nginx included. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.

Replacements

Listings that take over the same core job as Laravel Herd.

  • Laragon

    A lightweight, portable local development environment for PHP, Node.js and other web stacks on Windows.

    FreemiumProprietaryWindows

    Laragon is a portable Windows-only environment covering PHP, Node.js and other stacks, with automatic SSL and multiple runtime versions, but it has no macOS version.

  • MAMP

    A local web server environment with Apache or Nginx, MySQL and PHP for macOS and Windows.

    FreemiumProprietaryWindowsmacOS

    MAMP offers Apache or Nginx with MySQL on macOS and Windows, with a database included, though per-project hosts require the paid MAMP PRO edition.

  • XAMPP

    Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl packaged as one local development stack.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinux

    XAMPP is open source and adds Linux support, bundling Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl, but it is configured for convenience rather than security and lags upstream versions.

  • Local

    A desktop app that sets up and runs WordPress sites on your own computer for development.

    FreeProprietaryWindowsmacOSLinux

    Local runs on Windows, macOS and Linux with switchable PHP environments and one-click SSL, but it is limited to WordPress sites rather than Laravel projects.

Similar software

Related functionality, not a direct replacement.