Flock 1.0 is a free, open-source alternative to Laravel Herd
Flock runs PHP, Node, databases and mail locally on macOS, Windows and Linux, giving away features Laravel Herd reserves for its Pro tier.
Lukas Frey and the team at Guava released Flock 1.0.0, a free, open-source local development app for Laravel. Like Herd, it gives each project its own .test domain with trusted HTTPS and a per-project PHP version, and runs natively on macOS, Windows and Linux rather than through Docker or WSL.
The difference is what’s behind a paywall. Herd needs a Pro licence for databases, its mail catcher and its dump viewer; in Flock, all three are free. It supports PHP 8.1 through 8.5 side by side, and ships an MCP server so agents such as Claude Code and Cursor can read a project’s sites, caught mail, dumps and errors directly. The code is AGPL-3.0 licensed, and Flock runs on Linux, which Herd does not.
Why it matters: Herd Pro’s price has been the main thing standing between Laravel developers and features like a built-in mail catcher. Flock removes that cost entirely, and brings the same workflow to Linux for the first time.
The caveat: macOS support is Apple silicon only, so Intel Macs are out, and there’s no support for PHP versions older than 8.1.