Pancake StackPancake Stack › Pancake Stack Manual
Welcome to Pancake
What Pancake Stack is, what it brings with it, what your Mac needs, and how to read this manual.
1.1What Pancake is
Pancake Stack runs websites on your Mac. It brings its own web servers, languages and databases inside the app, so there is nothing to install and nothing to configure in Terminal. You click New Site, answer up to four questions, and the site opens in your browser at name.localhost with its own database.
When a site is ready, Pancake takes it the rest of the way: a temporary link to show someone, your own domain, a copy on your phone over Wi-Fi, or a deploy to your hosting company or a cloud server.
Pancake is a Mac App Store app. It runs inside Apple's app sandbox, and it never touches the Apache that comes with macOS, Homebrew, MAMP or anything else you have installed. You can keep using those side by side.
1.2What comes in the box
| Component | Versions | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Apache | 2.4 | Serves every site. Each site gets its own virtual host. |
| PHP | 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2 and 7.1 | Every plan runs the newest PHP. Choosing an older version per site is FullStack. |
| MySQL | 8.4 | One database and one user per site. Adminer is included for browsing it. |
| Python | 3.12, 3.13 and 3.14, with uv | For Django, Flask and FastAPI sites. |
| PostgreSQL | 17 | FullStack, switched on in Services. |
| Valkey and Memcached | Caches, FullStack. | |
| Nginx | An alternative web server per site, FullStack. | |
| cloudflared | Puts sites online through Cloudflare without router setup. |
Every PHP 8 version includes the extensions popular apps expect: GD, Imagick, intl, zip, bz2, XSL, sodium, YAML, OAuth, Tidy, APCu, OPcache and Xdebug. The full list of components and their licences is in Help ▸ Open-source licences.
1.3What your Mac needs
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
- For the Assistant on Apple Intelligence: a Mac with Apple Intelligence turned on. On other Macs the Assistant can use an AI provider with your own key, or you can leave it off.
- For putting sites online: an internet connection. A free Cloudflare account is needed only for your own domain; the temporary test link needs no account at all.
1.4The three stacks
Pancake is a subscription with three plans, named after how tall the stack is. Every plan runs as many sites on your Mac as you like; taller stacks put more of them online and add more toppings. New subscribers get a free first week.
| Plan | In short |
|---|---|
| ShortStack | Unlimited local sites, one site online, one deploy target. |
| TallStack | Up to 10 sites online, publishing to your host over SFTP or FTP, staging copies, database publishing, mail relay, outside PostgreSQL and SSH tunnels, Pancake Cloud saves, up to 3 servers on AWS. |
| FullStack | Everything unlimited, older PHP per site, PostgreSQL, Valkey, Memcached, Nginx, scheduled tasks and workers, off-site backups, push alerts, sync between your Macs, servers on every provider. |
The full comparison is in Plans and subscription.
1.5Your sites stay yours
Pancake has no account and no analytics. Your sites, databases and settings live on your Mac; passwords and keys live in your Keychain. When something goes elsewhere (Cloudflare, your host, your storage bucket, your iCloud, an AI provider you chose), it goes straight from your Mac with your own credentials, never through Enfour. If a subscription ends, nothing is deleted, and you can still export every site and database. See Privacy and your data.
1.6How to read this manual
The chapters follow the life of a site: start it, build it, share it, keep it running. If you are new to Pancake, read A tour of the window and Your first site, then dip into whatever you need.
- Menu paths
- Written like Settings ▸ Local HTTPS: open Settings in the sidebar, then the Local HTTPS section.
- Plan badges
- ShortStack TallStack FullStack mark features that need a particular plan. A feature with a TallStack badge is in TallStack and FullStack. Anything without a badge is in every plan.
- Advanced
- Each pane shows its simple settings first. When a step says "Advanced", turn on the Advanced switch at the top right of that pane.
Pancake also has Help inside the app. Choose Help ▸ Pancake Help or press ⌘?, and search. The Assistant can answer questions from the same Help, and it can read your sites' logs.