Is it more efficient to develop on local, and then transfer to live?

I’m new to website development and am just about to develop 3 small websites ( not for clients ) on HostGator. Any opinions on the following:

I’ve heard some say that it is more efficient(faster) to develop on local host and then transfer/synchronize to live host with a tool like BackupBuddy, Duplicator, or Structure.

Any opinions on this? I.e do you prefer to develop your sites locally?
If so any helpful tools/plugins?

Thanks