Laravel Herd Pricing 2026
Plans, hidden costs, and cheaper alternatives compared
Is Laravel Herd worth the price?
The Free tier for Laravel Herd is incredibly generous, offering a robust development environment with essential tools at no cost.
The lack of transparent pricing for the Pro tier makes it difficult to assess its value, but the free offering alone is highly competitive. It's best for individual developers and small teams looking for a powerful, free local development solution, with the Pro tier potentially catering to those needing advanced debugging and service management.
Pricing Plans
Free
Free
- Native binaries for PHP, nginx, and other services
- Includes Composer, Laravel installer, and Expose
- Manage multiple versions of PHP (7.4 - 8.5)
- Share site configurations with herd.yml
- Integrate directly with Laravel Forge
Pro
Contact us
- 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)
- Catch and debug application mails
- Access and search through local log files
- Painless Xdebug integration
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Pro tier pricing is not public
Potential for additional service costs
No clear upgrade path pricing
Which Plan Do You Need?
Individual Laravel developers
Teams needing free dev environment
Users prioritizing ease of setup
How Laravel Herd Compares to Competitors
Compared to paid alternatives like Laravel Valet (macOS only, free but requires manual setup) or paid MAMP Pro ($79 for a single license), Laravel Herd's Free tier offers a more complete and user-friendly experience across both Windows and macOS without any direct cost. The Pro tier's value is unknown without pricing, but the free offering significantly undercuts competitors on initial investment.
Laravel Herd Pricing FAQ
How much does Laravel Herd cost?
Laravel Herd uses custom pricing. Contact Laravel Herd directly for a quote based on your team size and requirements.
Does Laravel Herd have a free plan?
Yes. Laravel Herd offers a free plan called "Free". It includes: Native binaries for PHP, nginx, and other services, Includes Composer, Laravel installer, and Expose, Manage multiple versions of PHP (7.4 - 8.5).
Is there a cheaper alternative to Laravel Herd?
Yes. Popular alternatives to Laravel Herd include Flightcontrol, Vercel, Upsun. Free alternatives include Flightcontrol, Vercel, Upsun. Compare them side-by-side on Toolradar.
Cheaper alternatives to Laravel Herd
3 of 3 direct competitors below offer a free plan. Per-seat pricing varies up to 60% across this set.
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