Govard and DDEV

Both tools run a Magento project in containers and give it a local domain. They differ in what they start, what they automate outside the container, and how the project is configured. This page states the differences; the numbers live on the benchmark page, so they cannot drift apart from the method that produced them.

What starts, by default

	Govard	DDEV
Web + database	yes	yes
Varnish, Redis, OpenSearch, RabbitMQ	part of the default profile	add-ons
Router ports	80 and 443, shared with every Govard project	80 and 443 by default, configurable
Configuration file	.govard.yml	.ddev/config.yaml

That difference is the first thing to read in any comparison: a stack with Varnish and a search engine is not the same product as a stack without them, and the benchmark page says which services each arm ran.

What Govard does that is outside this comparison

• govard deploy with a sandbox rehearsal, rollback and resume.
• Named remotes with scoped capabilities and a write-protected prod.
• govard audit with persisted sessions, and a profiler capture.
• A shared SSH gateway, snapshots, and a desktop app over the same engine.

None of that is measured here; it is either present in the tool or it is not.

Moving a project from DDEV to Govard

govard init --migrate-from ddev

The importer reads .ddev/config.yaml and reports every key it mapped, defaulted or ignored. It does not silently drop settings.

When DDEV is the better choice

• Windows: DDEV's native Windows support is mature; Govard's supported path there is WSL2 (see Windows and WSL2).
• A large add-on ecosystem for services Govard does not ship.
• A team already standardised on DDEV and happy with it. Switching costs more than it returns unless something is actually hurting.

When Govard is the better choice

• Magento and Mage-OS depth: env.php wiring, table prefixes, Varnish, multi-store domains, and a php-debug container that does not slow the normal one.
• Deployment and remote work inside the same tool you develop with.
• A local CA and *.test domains that need no per-project setup.