Jun 2, 2026 · E-commerce · 2min read

Installing Magento on localhost

Local installation of the Magento open-source e-commerce platform for developing and debugging store themes and modules at http://localhost/magento.

Magento Open Source (formerly Magento CE) is a fully-featured PHP e-commerce platform suitable for B2C/B2B online stores. Local installation can be resource-intensive, so it is recommended to allocate sufficient memory and use Composer.

Prerequisites

PHP 8.1+ or 8.2 (according to the official compatibility matrix)
MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB
Elasticsearch or OpenSearch (required for search in Magento 2.4+)
Composer 2
Recommended RAM ≥ 8GB (for local full stack)

Installation Steps (Composer)

composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition magento

You will need the auth.json key from Magento Marketplace.

Configure the web server, setting DocumentRoot to pub/ (not the project root)
Alternatively, during development, place magento in htdocs/ and configure an alias pointing to pub/
Use phpMyAdmin to create the database magento_local
Install via command line or access http://localhost/magento to run the Setup Wizard

Database Example

Item	Value
Host	`localhost`
Database	`magento_local`
User	`root`

Common Paths

Path	Description
`/` (pub root)	Store frontend
`/admin`	Admin backend
`bin/magento`	CLI (cache, compile, deploy)

Local Development Commands

php bin/magento setup:upgrade
php bin/magento cache:flush
php bin/magento indexer:reindex

Developer mode: php bin/magento deploy:mode:set developer

Frequently Asked Questions

Slow installation / Insufficient memory
Increase PHP memory_limit (e.g., to 2G); add swap; use COMPOSER_MEMORY_LIMIT=-1.

Elasticsearch not running
Magento 2.4+ requires Elasticsearch/OpenSearch to be installed locally or refer to the official Docker solution.

Static content 404
Run setup:static-content:deploy; in developer mode, you can symlink static files.

Summary

The typical local address for Magento is http://localhost/magento (the web root should point to pub/), with high resource demands, suitable for professional development of e-commerce themes and modules.