On the Delicious Brains blog there'a a post that compares four different products for creating local PHP development environments: XAMPP, MAMP, DesktopServer and Local. Both package provide similar functionality but with slight differences.

An easy-to-use local testing server is one of the most important tools in a WordPress developer’s utility belt. Developing in a local environment lets you make changes to dev sites quickly and easily without having to transfer files anywhere and greatly reduces the risk of making breaking changes on a live server.

While many computers are capable of hosting a WordPress site without needing to install any extra packages, there are a few advantages that a dedicated local development environment can offer.

[...] There are quite a few different applications and tools that fit this bill, but for now we’ll be comparing the 4 GUI-based tools that seem to me to be the largest players in this space: XAMPP, MAMP (Pro), DesktopServer, and Local By Flywheel.

The post then walks through each piece of software, covering the installation and getting it up and running with a WordPress application. There's also a mini-review for each with good/bad comments and an overall rating.The post ends with some comments about the author's own preferences, which they use now and which they'd choose in the future.