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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Donut Browser

Hi HN, I'm excited to share my open source project, a browser orchestrator. It's purpose is to make it easy to manage many browser profiles on one system. Currently it only works on MacOS, but since I've built it using Tauri (which is a Rust backend and TypeScript frontend), I expect to add Linux and Windows support in the future. I've built it primarily for myself as I use a lot of browsers and having an easy way to manage all of my profiles would make (have made, actually) my dock less cluttered haha. Also, part of why I built it is because as someone who doesn't really care about…

Donut Browser is an open-source tool for managing multiple browser profiles on a single system, reducing clutter and simplifying organization. Built with a Rust backend and TypeScript frontend using Tauri, it currently… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    Hey HN! I built a native macOS desktop client for Hacker News and I'm open-sourcing it under the MIT license. GitHub: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News Download (signed & notarized DMG, macOS 14.0+): https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News/releases Screenshots: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News#screenshots I spend a lot of time reading HN — I wanted something that felt like a proper Mac app: a sidebar for browsing stories, an integrated reader for articles, and comment threading — all in one window.…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hey HN, I made Browser-Use, an open-source tool that lets (all Langchain supported) LLMs execute tasks directly in the browser just with function calling. It allows you to build agents that interact with web elements using natural language prompts. We created a layer that simplifies website interaction for LLMs by extracting xPaths and interactive elements like buttons and input fields (and other fancy things). This enables you to design custom web automation and scraping functions without manual inspection through DevTools. Hasn't this been done a lot of times? Good question, as a general…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3WL

    My company launched a new open source web browser built on Chromium. It supports decentralized domains on Handshake and is the first browser to support .eth DNS. It is also the first browser to support secure web browsing with DANE. Check it out: https://impervious.com/beacon https://github.com/imperviousinc/beacon

    2022 · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    ServBay▲399

    Hello HN, I’m one of the creators of ServBay. I built this because I got tired of the cognitive load required just to start coding. On my Mac, it was a fragile mix of Homebrew services and asdf conflicts. On Windows, managing PATH variables and fighting with Docker Desktop's resource usage was equally frustrating. I missed the simplicity of the MAMP/XAMPP era, but I needed to support modern stacks (Go, Rust, Node, etc.). What it is: ServBay is a native local development environment for both macOS and Windows. It is not a wrapper around Docker or VMs. It bundles everything you need into…

    2024 · servbay.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Control the web with prompts (open source)

    2025 · browser-use.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    I released a new version of Recut recently, rewritten from the ground up using Rust, Svelte, Tauri, TypeScript, and Tailwind (RUSTTT stack for the win!). It's the first app I've built with Tauri and I've really enjoyed it. Some back story: Recut is a tool I built to speed up my screencast editing workflow. It's like a lightweight single-purpose video editor. It chops out the pauses, with some knobs to tweak how closely it cuts and what it leaves in, and lets you get a live preview of what it'll look and sound like with the cuts applied. It can then export to a handful of other editors,…

    2022 · getrecut.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    The full-code, no-ops tool for browser automation

    2023 · browserless.io · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    💚🇺🇸🗽Secure remote browsing anywhere, any way you like it. - GitHub - BrowserBox/BrowserBox: 💚🇺🇸🗽Secure remote browsing anywhere, any way you like it.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    I'm a consultant and I normally deal with multiple clients. I need an isolated browser for each to maintain my sanity. I could create separate profiles in Chrome and Firefox but the main issue is when you click on a link outside of the browser (e.g. in your IDE), in which profile should it be opened? I wrote a Python script that redirects URLs to the correct browser instance and set it as my default browser. Over time, the script has grown and become essential to my work. I cleaned it up and open-sourced it. Hope that someone else may find it useful too!

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Turn GitHub into a project management suite! Plus, socks

    2015 · app.zenhub.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    An example implementation of a tiny Web browser for educational purposes. - lmt-swallow/puppy-browser

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hey HN, We got tired of browser frameworks restricting the LLM, so we removed the framework and gave the LLM maximum freedom to do whatever it's trained on. We gave the harness the ability to self correct and add new tools if the LLM wants (is pre-trained on) that. Our Browser Use library is tens of thousands of lines of deterministic heuristics wrapping Chrome (CDP websocket). Element extractors, click helpers, target managemenet (SUPER painful), watchdogs (crash handling, file downloads, alerts), cross origin iframes (if you want to click on an element you have to switch the target first,…

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    A fully interactive, Mac-like experience directly in browser

    Nov 2025 · hargunpreet.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hey HN! We're Nithin and Nikhil, twin brothers building BrowserOS (YC S24). We're an open-source, privacy-first alternative to the AI browsers from big labs. The big differentiator: on BrowserOS you can use local LLMs or BYOK and run the agent entirely on the client side, so your company/sensitive data stays on your machine! Today we're launching filesystem access... just like Claude Cowork, our browser agent can read files, write files, run shell commands! But honestly, we didn't plan for this. It turns out the privacy decision we made 9 months ago accidentally positioned us for this…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Kinase▲159

    A framework for building web scrapers for Chrome

    2017 · b12.io · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hi HN, I’m sharing mochi.js (https://github.com/0xchasercat/mochi), a Bun-native, raw-CDP browser automation framework. It's designed to make programmatic browser use more effective by focusing on consistency and measured parity with regular traffic, purely from the JS layer, against stock Chromium. The most common forms of browser automation focus heavily on client-side line by line probes, which are mostly cosmetic. This makes people feel better but it doesn't have much relevance to actual WAF or anti-automation defences. Mochi.js focuses on what actually matters,…

    May 2026 · mochijs.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Target browsers config for modern web apps

    2022 · browsersl.ist · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    TabDog▲102

    Hey everyone! I have a bad habit that I always end up with dozens of browser tabs and apps open at the same time. It gets so messy that finding one specific website becomes a nightmare. So I developed a extension + macOS menu bar app for myself and after using it for a while, I found it is much more better than I expected, so I decided to package it and release it as open source, completely free! I'd love to hear your feedback and looking forward to improve our app together!

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    We've been building Crust (https://crustjs.com/), a TypeScript-first, Bun-native CLI framework with zero dependencies. It's been powering our core product internally for a while, and we're now open-sourcing it. The problem we kept running into: existing CLI frameworks in the JS ecosystem are either minimal arg parsers where you wire everything yourself, or heavyweight frameworks with large dependency trees and Node-era assumptions. We wanted something in between. What Crust does differently: - Full type inference from definitions — args and flags are inferred automatically. No…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    WebBrain▲117

    The sidebar agent for the rest of us

    Aug 2026 · webbrain.one · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Check out this impressive project that enables running LLMs entirely in the browser using WebGPU. Key features: - Zero token costs, no cloud infrastructure required - Complete data privacy through local processing - Simple 3-line code integration - Built on MLC and Transformer.js The benchmarks show smaller models can effectively handle many common tasks. Currently the project roadmap includes: - No-code AI pipeline builder - Browser-based RAG for document chat - Analytics/logging - Model fine-tuning interface

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    💚🇺🇸🗽Secure remote browsing anywhere, any way you like it. - GitHub - BrowserBox/BrowserBox: 💚🇺🇸🗽Secure remote browsing anywhere, any way you like it.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Save yourself from being tracked by evil URL references

    2019 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey everyone, After watching MegaLag’s investigation into the Honey affiliate scam, I decided to create something better. I’m 18, an open-source enthusiast, and this is my first big project that’s actually getting some attention. It's called Syrup, a fully open-source and transparent alternative to Honey. My goal is to make a browser extension that’s honest, ethical, and user-focused, unlike the Honey. I’m still figuring things out, from maintaining the project on GitHub to covering future costs for a custom marketing website. It’s not easy balancing all this as a university student, but I’m…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

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