# Local development with Laragon

Source: https://docs.fortrabbit.com/integrations/local-development/laragon
Reviewed: 2026-07-09

> Laragon is a fast, portable local development environment for Windows with Apache or Nginx, MySQL, PHP, Redis, Memcached and Node.js.


Laragon is an open source, portable, isolated development environment for Windows. It runs services natively without virtualization and comes with a simple GUI to manage your local stack.

- [laragon.org](https://laragon.org/)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/leokhoa/laragon)

Free and open source with options to upgrade (nagware).

## Installation

Download the installer from [laragon.org](https://laragon.org/) and run it. Laragon installs in a self-contained folder and starts its services through a system tray GUI.

## Example usage

1. Place your project files in the `laragon/www/` directory.
2. Laragon automatically creates a local virtual host (`projectname.test`) for each subfolder.
3. Click **Start All** in the Laragon GUI to start Apache/Nginx, MySQL, and PHP.
4. Visit `http://projectname.test` in your browser.

## Connecting to fortrabbit

Laragon provides a local PHP and Git environment you can use to deploy to fortrabbit. Make sure Git and Composer are available in your shell (Laragon bundles both). From the Laragon terminal, follow the standard [fortrabbit deployment workflow](/platform/deployment/intro).