Laravel Herd
Laravel
development
perfected

One click PHP development environment.

Zero dependencies. Zero headaches.

Download for Windows Looking for macOS?
Herd Pro
Quick Access
  • Services
  • NGINX
  • PHP 8.3
  • MySQL
  • Redis
1:29 AM
12/12/2024

Herd is a blazing fast, native Laravel and PHP development environment for Windows. It includes everything you need to get started with Laravel development, including PHP and nginx. Once you install Herd, you're ready to start developing with Laravel.

Features

The fastest environment around

Herd uses native binaries for PHP, nginx, and other services, making it faster than other PHP development environments.

No containers, VMs, or wonky virtualization methods – just plain binaries as it should be.

Everything you need to get started

Herd includes binaries for Composer, the Laravel installer, and Expose, making them available to your CLI automatically.

This makes it possible to manage your sites via Powershell or use the site wizard of Herd.

Unlock the full potential with Herd Pro

Herd provides everything that you need to get started with Laravel development for free but it offers great capabilities with Herd Pro.

Explore all Herd Pro features and get the best development environment for Laravel.

Pro Feature

Blazing fast debugging

Herd Pro gives you a powerful interface to help you watch and collect your debug information.
All of your application's dump() and dd() calls will be beautifully formatted and can be filtered from Herd's separate Dump window.

Just keep using dump() as usual – we will take care of the rest.

All (6)
Dumps (2)
Queries (1)
Jobs (0)
Logs (3)
01:29:56 – routes/web.php:29

"Laravel Herd"

01:29:56 – routes/web.php:30

SELECT * FROM `users` LIMIT 1

01:29:56 – routes/web.php:30 
  0 of 0   
App\Models\User {#892 ▼
  #connection: "sqlite"
  #table: "users"
  #primaryKey: "id"
  #keyType: "int"
  +incrementing: true
  #with: []
  #withCount: []
  +preventsLazyLoading: false
  #perPage: 15
  +exists: true
  +wasRecentlyCreated: false
  #escapeWhenCastingToString: false
  #attributes: array:13 [▶
    "id" => 1
    "name" => "Taylor Otwell"
    "email" => "[email protected]"
    "email_verified_at" => "2024-12-12 01:29:56"
    "remember_token" => null
    "current_team_id" => null
    "profile_photo_path" => null
    "created_at" => "2024-12-12 01:29:56"
    "updated_at" => "2024-12-12 01:31:43"
    "two_factor_secret" => null
    "two_factor_recovery_codes" => null
    "two_factor_confirmed_at" => null
  ]

  #fillable: array:3 [▶
    0 => "name"
    1 => "email"
    2 => "password"
  ]
  #rememberTokenName: "remember_token"
}

Easily manage multiple versions of PHP

Herd comes with PHP 7.4 - 8.4, and you can switch between these versions in seconds. Herd even lets you pin sites to specific PHP versions.

Herd keeps all of your PHP installations up to date and notifies you about new updates in time.

PHP Settings
Pro Feature

Frontend tooling included with nvm

Herd ships with nvm, the Node Version Manager, allowing you to easily manage Node.js versions on your machine.

You can install and switch between versions in seconds via your terminal or the Herd UI.

Node Version Manager
Pro Feature

Seamlessly run and manage services

Herd is the control panel for your local environment, making it easy to set up and run complementary services to your Laravel applications.

From databases to storage systems, we got you covered with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Typesense, Meilisearch, MinIO, and even Laravel Reverb.

Herd Services

Share site configurations with your team

Herd allows your to add a herd.yml file to your project, which contains all the necessary information to set up a the site on a new machine. Pair with Herd Pro to set up sites with all services in seconds.

Keep PHP versions, services and even Forge configurations in sync across your whole team.

herd.yml

Integrate directly with Laravel Forge

You can link local Herd sites with Laravel Forge servers, allowing you to deploy your local sites to Forge with a single click.

The integration with Forge makes opening an SSH connection as fast as grabbing some environment variables or opening the site in the related Forge panel.

Forge integration
Pro Feature

Catch and debug application mails

Herd comes with its own local email service that makes testing and debugging emails as easy as it can get.

The mail service directs emails into separate inboxes per application so that they are easy to find.

Herd Mail
Pro Feature

Access and search through local log files

No more digging through local log files. Herd's powerful Log Viewer makes it painless to quickly search through your local logs, even allowing you to jump directly to your IDE from a log entry.

Herd instantly refreshes the log list whenever a new entry is added.

PHP Settings
Pro Feature

Painless Xdebug integration

Herd's powerful Xdebug detection automatically enables Xdebug when necessary.

By watching for incoming requests with the Xdebug browser extension, you can be ensured that Xdebug will be available when you need it – and only then.

Xdebug integration

Thousands of developers love Herd

This is what they have to say about it.

Eric L. Barnes
Eric L. Barnes
Owner of Laravel News
Herd is the best thing for PHP since Laravel.
Lucas Giovanny
Lucas Giovanny
Engineering Team Lead at Worksome
Just use it. There is no coming back!
János Horváth
János Horváth
CTO of BrokerChooser
Our Development Team uses Herd (Pro) and onboarding or adding new services is the smoothest it’s ever been.
Stephen Bateman
Stephen Bateman
Founder of SellTickets.org
Herd is our whole team's default tool for local development. It's hard to imagine writing code without it. It improved our experience of Valet and replaced our need for Docker.
Michi Hoffmann
Michi Hoffmann
Senior Software Engineer at Sentry
Instead of waiting on brew to download half of the internet to setup PHP, it only takes a few seconds using Herd.
Gilbert Pellegrom
Gilbert Pellegrom
CTO of Lemon Squeezy
Herd is by far the easiest way to run PHP/Laravel sites on your Mac that I’ve tried. It’s fast, has a great UI, the debugging experience is top-notch, and the team behind it are excellent.
Alex Garrett-Smith
Alex Garrett-Smith
Founder of Codecourse
Herd Pro makes local development so easy, I don’t even think about it anymore. I’m never switching back.
Sascha Gysel
Sascha Gysel
Co-Founder of Trenda
Herd allows our startup to spend more time on working on our product for our clients, instead of fiddling with setting up a dev environment. Brilliant🚀
Caleb Porzio
Caleb Porzio
Creator of Livewire and Alpine.js
Herd is one of those pieces of software that makes you think “How did we manage without this for so many years”. It’s golden.
Simon Hamp
Simon Hamp
Founder of Laradir
Herd has saved me from Brew and Docker hell.
Andreas Herss
Andreas Herss
Co-owner of Tickethero
Herd has simplified the way we do local development, how have we managed without for so many years? Herd pro is a no brainer.
Joe Kneeland
Joe Kneeland
Founder of SiteBuilderStudio
Herd is the smoothest, best looking, smartest, and most charming of all the options. Worth every penny for pro. Herd is the way.

Pricing

All features that you need to get up and running with Laravel are free, but if you want to dig deeper and get the best developer experience, upgrade to Herd Pro.

Herd Basic

Free
Start with the free version and get a full Laravel development environment by downloading just one Windows app.
  • PHP
  • nginx
  • DNS
  • Node.js
  • Laravel Forge Integration
  • Community support
Download for Windows

Herd Pro

$99
Upgrade to the full integrated developer experience with amazing testing and debugging capabilities.
  • Everything from free
  • Dumps
  • Mail
  • Log Viewer
  • Services
  • XDebug detection
  • License for one year
  • Email support
Purchase license

Herd Teams

$299
Get Herd Pro for your whole team and assign licenses to your team members in the license management portal.
  • 10 Herd Pro Licenses
  • License Management Portal
  • Priority Email Support
Purchase license
Local taxes may apply. Herd Pro includes a 14 days money-back guarantee.

Commonly
asked
questions

There are currently no plans for a Linux version of Herd, and we believe that Linux users are more comfortable installing and running their development environment in general. We regularly evaluate our decisions and this might change in the future.

You can activate every Herd Pro license key on two devices at the same time. If you get a new device, you can simply disable old activations in the license management portal and activate them on the new device.

Every Herd Team license key comes with one activation. You can reset license keys and assign them to other team members at any time.

If your team is bigger than 10 developers, they are usually grouped into more than one team. Please buy multiple team licenses, you can manage them all in one account.

No, there isn't. However, the official documentation will get you a long way in understanding all additional features.

All purchases are also covered by a 14-day refund policy.

Users of the free version can create issues in the community repository. Herd Pro users and teams can also contact us at [email protected] but we recommend checking the community repository or the docs first.

We don't charge you automatically. You will receive an email with a renewal link 30 days before your license expires. You can renew your license at any time.

If you decide not do renew your license, Herd automatically downgrades to the free version. Please make sure to backup your databases before your license expires. If you upgrade to Herd Pro again, all your data will be available again – we don't delete it during a downgrade.

Perfect matches for Herd

Tinkerwell logo

Tinkerwell

Tinkerwell is the missing graphical UI for interacting with your Laravel app. It provides a powerful code editor allowing you to run and debug code snippets within the context of your local and remote Laravel apps.

Tinkerwell is "php artisan tinker" on steroids.

Get Tinkerwell
Expose logo

Expose

Create public URLs for local sites through any firewall and VPN. Receive webhooks on your machine, test local sites on mobile devices or share them with others.

Herd integrates with Expose natively and works great with a free account.

Get Expose