ServBay and Laravel Herd are the two best-known managed local dev environments for macOS, and if you've searched for a comparison, you've read ServBay's version of it — every result ranking for “servbay vs herd” today is ServBay-authored or commissioned. This one comes with its own disclosure: we build PortBay, a third tool in this category. The difference is we'll say so up front, hand out the wins both tools genuinely earn, and tell you when picking one of them over ours is the right call.
The short answer
Pick Laravel Herdif you live in the Laravel ecosystem and want the most polished PHP-first experience on macOS — it's built by Beyond Code (the Expose and Tinkerwell team) and it shows. Pick ServBayif you need the widest language matrix — PHP, Node, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, Rust and .NET in one app — and you're comfortable with a closed-source subscription. Neither has a generous free tier, which is where the third option enters; more on that below.
What each free tier actually includes
This is where most comparisons get vague, so let's be concrete. Herd's free tier is PHP, nginx and DNS — genuinely free forever, and genuinely minimal: databases, mail capture, the log viewer, Xdebug integration and multi-version Node all sit behind Pro. ServBay's free tier is capped at 5 sites and 5 DNS records, with mail, public tunnels and wildcard SSL reserved for Pro. Both free tiers are designed to be outgrown — that's not a criticism, it's the business model, but you should know it walking in.
What Pro costs, and what it unlocks
Herd Pro is $99/year for a single seat (two devices). It unlocks databases — one shared instance across all your sites — plus mail capture, the log viewer, Xdebug, Node version management and the Services dashboard. Public tunnels are not included: those go through Expose, a separate Beyond Code product, and custom subdomains need their own subscription. ServBay Pro is $9.90/month or $59/year on a two-device subscription, unlocking mail, tunnels, ACME auto-renewal and wildcard SSL on top of the polyglot runtimes. On raw price ServBay undercuts Herd by 40% a year; on Laravel polish, Herd stays ahead.
Where each one genuinely wins
Herd wins on Laravel depth and finish: per-site PHP versions (7.4–8.5), automatic migration of Valet certificates, the smoothest artisan-centric workflow in the category, and a mature Windows build. If your week is Laravel, Forge and Vapor, Herd fits like the official tool it effectively is. ServBay wins on breadth: eight language runtimes, phpMyAdmin and Adminer pre-installed, and a single dashboard for everything — closer to a control panel than a menu-bar utility. If you ship a PHP app on Monday and a Go service on Tuesday, ServBay covers both without a second tool.
Looking for a free Laravel Herd Pro alternative?
If you're here because you hit Herd's upgrade prompt — you wanted a database, mail capture or Node and met the $99/year wall — you have three honest options. One: stay on free Herd and assemble the gated pieces yourself — DBnginfor databases and a Homebrew Mailpit for mail are both free, at the cost of running three tools instead of one. Two: ServBay's $59/year is meaningfully cheaper than Herd Pro, though still closed source and still a subscription. Three: PortBay — the tool we build — is free and open source (AGPL-3.0) up to 6 projects, and the free tier includes exactly the pieces Herd gates: per-project MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL databases (isolated, not shared), built-in Mailpit, Cloudflare tunnels, Node alongside PHP, and an AI-agent task board besides. The honest caveat: it's macOS-only (Apple Silicon), and Pro ($10/month) removes the project cap. The switch guide covers moving from Herd in an afternoon.
Side by side
| Laravel Herd | ServBay | PortBay | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | PHP + nginx + DNS | 5 sites, 5 DNS records | 6 projects, full stack |
| Paid tier | $99/yr (2 devices) | $9.90/mo or $59/yr | $10/mo |
| Open source | No | No | Yes — AGPL-3.0 |
| Languages | PHP first, Node in Pro | PHP, Node, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, Rust, .NET | PHP, Node, static |
| Databases | Pro — shared instance | Included, shared dashboard | Free — per project |
| Mail capture | Pro | Pro | Free (Mailpit) |
| Public tunnels | Via Expose (separate sub) | Pro | Free (Cloudflare) |
| Platforms | macOS + Windows | macOS + Windows beta | macOS (Apple Silicon) |
| AI coding-agent board | — | — | Yes |
How to decide
Laravel all week and budget for polish: Herd. Polyglot stack beyond PHP and Node, fine with subscriptions: ServBay. Want the Herd-Pro feature set without the Pro price, in open source — or you want your local environment to double as a board for Claude Code and Codex: PortBay is a free download, and the per-tool comparisons linked throughout say plainly where it loses. For the wider context — Homebrew, Docker, Valet and the rest — the full PHP-on-Mac guide maps the whole field.