Two immediate I can think of: 1) You don't have to add new .dev hosts to /etc/hosts repeatedly. Once you're setup, all .dev is local 2) /etc/hosts doesn't su

Two immediate I can think of: 1) You don't have to add new .dev hosts to /etc/hosts repeatedly. Once you're setup, all .dev is local 2) /etc/hosts doesn't support wildcards, so dnsmasq is great with apps that have many or randomized subdomains.