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Bearsampp has no installer. You download a ZIP archive, extract it to the folder of your choice, and launch bearsampp.exe. The entire stack lives inside that one folder — nothing is written outside of it.

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System requirements

  • Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64-bit)
  • Administrator privileges — required to install and manage Windows services
  • At least 500 MB of free disk space (more if you plan to add additional module versions)

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Download and setup

1

Download the latest release

Go to the Bearsampp releases page and download the latest .zip file.
2

Choose an installation folder

Decide where you want to run Bearsampp from. Good options include:
  • C:\bearsampp — a dedicated folder on your system drive
  • D:\bearsampp — a secondary drive
  • The root of a USB drive, such as E:\bearsampp
Avoid paths that contain spaces or special characters (such as C:\My Projects\bearsampp or C:\Users\John Doe\bearsampp). Some modules do not handle these paths correctly and may fail to start.
3

Extract the ZIP archive

Right-click the downloaded ZIP file and select Extract All, then choose your installation folder as the destination. When extraction finishes, you should have a folder containing bearsampp.exe and subdirectories like bin/, www/, tools/, and apps/.
4

Run as Administrator

Right-click bearsampp.exe and select Run as administrator.
Bearsampp requires administrator privileges to install and manage Windows services. If you launch it without administrator rights, you will see an error prompt with the message: “bearsampp requires administrator privileges to install and manage Windows services. Please right-click on bearsampp.exe and select ‘Run as administrator’.”
To avoid repeating this step every time, you can configure bearsampp.exe to always run as administrator:
  1. Right-click bearsampp.exe and select Properties
  2. Go to the Compatibility tab
  3. Check Run this program as an administrator
  4. Click OK
5

Wait for first-launch setup

The first time Bearsampp starts, it performs initial setup — checking paths, registering services, and generating configuration files. A loading screen shows the progress. This takes a few seconds.Once setup completes, the Bearsampp bear icon appears in your Windows system tray and all bundled services start automatically.

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What happens on first launch

When Bearsampp starts for the first time:
  • Windows services are installed for Apache, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and other enabled binaries
  • The system tray icon appears — right-click it to access the full menu
  • All enabled services start automatically — you can verify this by opening http://localhost in your browser, which loads the Bearsampp dashboard
  • Log files are created in the logs/ directory inside your Bearsampp folder
If any service fails to start on first launch, check that the required port is not already in use by another application. Apache uses port 80 by default, MySQL uses 3306, and PostgreSQL uses 5432. You can change any of these from the tray menu.

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Portability note

Because Bearsampp is self-contained, you can move the entire folder to a different location at any time — including onto a USB drive. When you launch bearsampp.exe from the new location, it detects the path change and updates its configuration automatically. This makes Bearsampp suitable for carrying your full development environment between machines, keeping it on external storage, or maintaining separate installations for different projects. Now that Bearsampp is running, head to the quickstart guide to serve your first project.