For development, 256 works pretty well. If you host more than one site or have a lot of dynamically generated content, you can quickly surpass the 256MB limit

For development, 256 works pretty well. If you host more than one site or have a lot of dynamically generated content, you can quickly surpass the 256MB limit and need 512MB. This depends a lot on the stack you're using and what software your site depends on.