Laravel Herd
Laravel Herd is a native and blazing-fast development environment designed specifically for Laravel and PHP projects.
Our verdict
Who it's for
One-click, zero-dependency PHP and Laravel development environment for Windows and macOS.
Who should look elsewhere
Advanced features like debugging and service management are Pro-only
Pros
- +Extremely fast due to native binaries (no containers/VMs)
- +Easy one-click setup for Laravel development
- +Comprehensive suite of included development tools
- +Seamless PHP version management
- +Powerful debugging features in Pro version
Cons
- −Advanced features like debugging and service management are Pro-only
- −Specific to Laravel and PHP development, not a general-purpose environment
Key features
- ✓Native binaries for PHP and Nginx
- ✓Includes Composer, Laravel installer, and Expose
- ✓Supports PHP versions 7.4 - 8.5
- ✓Pin sites to specific PHP versions
- ✓Automatic PHP installation updates
- ✓Blazing fast debugging (Pro)
- ✓Formatted dump() and dd() output (Pro)
- ✓Integrated nvm for Node.js version management (Pro)
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | — | month | Native binaries for PHP, nginx, and other services; Includes Composer, Laravel installer, and Expose; Manage multiple versions of PHP (7.4 - 8.5) |
| Pro | — | month | Blazing fast debugging (dump() and dd() formatting); Frontend tooling included with nvm; Seamlessly run and manage services (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Typesense, Meilisearch, MinIO, Laravel Reverb) |