XAMPP got a lot of us started with PHP. Unzip it, click Start, open localhost , done. It's still what many tutorials and colleges use.

But XAMPP's last Windows release came out in November 2023 , and the newest PHP it ships is 8.2. PHP 8.5 was released on 20 November 2025 , and PHP 8.2 gets security fixes only until 31 December 2026 . I wanted a local stack for Windows that keeps up with PHP releases, is free for any use and doesn't need admin rights, so I built ServNook .

It's free and open source (MIT): github.com/hashencoder/servnook

What I wanted from a local stack

Official binaries , not repackaged ones, and downloads that are verified

Sites without editing the hosts file

Several PHP versions at once

Data that survives a crash, a dead battery or a bad update

Nothing exposed to the network unless I ask for it

Free and open source , including for commercial work

How ServNook works

Install and first run

The installer is per-user: it goes to C:\ServNook and needs no admin rights.…