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FVM vs Laravel Herd

FVM

fvm.app

Laravel Herd

herd.laravel.com

Side by side

FigureFVMLaravel Herd
Price fromFree$8.25/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Open source——
WindowsYesYes
macOSYesYes
LinuxYes—
APIYes—
Plans published13
Spec score · Development Environment Managers8.7 (#4)7.9 (#19)
PurposeFVM manages multiple Flutter SDK versions and lets projects pin a version for consistent app builds.Herd is a native Laravel and PHP development environment for Windows and macOS.

Plans

FVM

  • FVMFree

FVM pricing →

Laravel Herd

  • Herd BasicFree
  • Herd Pro$99 a year
  • Herd Teams$299 a year

Laravel Herd pricing →

In their own words

FVM

FVM manages Flutter SDK versions by project, allowing teams to keep builds consistent while using different versions across projects. A project’s `.fvmrc` file records its selected Flutter version and can include project-specific settings and flavors. FVM switches among installed SDKs without downloading them again. It can identify unreferenced versions, preview cleanup candidates, and remove unused SDKs with `fvm cleanup`. The documentation describes commands suitable for CI/CD automation and support for custom Flutter repositories. FVM provides packages for macOS, Linux, and Windows, with architecture availability varying by system. Installation options include a shell script, Homebrew, Chocolatey, Pub, and standalone packages. FVM detects VS Code and updates `.vscode/settings.json` for the Dart Code extension to use the project’s managed SDK. Android Studio and IntelliJ settings must be configured separately to point to the FVM SDK path. JSON API commands expose installed SDKs, releases, cleanup data, environment context, and project configuration. FVM stores known project roots in a machine-local file and says it does not scan disks for projects. The project is licensed under MIT.

Visit fvm.app

Laravel Herd

Laravel Herd has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit herd.laravel.com