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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Fern

We built the world’s first generated, idiomatic gRPC and REST SDK. If you have public gRPC and REST endpoints, Fern is the SDK provider for you.

Fern is a developer tool that generates software development kits and API documentation from existing API specifications. It supports REST APIs defined in OpenAPI format, WebSocket APIs using AsyncAPI, and gRPC APIs… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1

    Hi HN, this is Danny, Deep, and Zach. We built Fern after our previous ed tech startup failed. We were frustrated with how much time we spent writing “API code” instead of working on the actual product. We tried to use OpenAPI but we were underwhelmed - the generated code wasn’t idiomatic and it still required manual work (custom templates, scripts, manually publishing SDKs to registries). The Fern compiler takes your API as input and invokes generators that output things like: SDKs, server code, a Postman collection, and an OpenAPI spec. Some technical highlights about the compiler +…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    API design studio for product managers

    2023 · conektto.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Hi Hacker News! My name is Sagar, I’m working on a startup called Speakeasy - we’re making all APIs self-service. The platform is currently in beta, but we’re independently launching this tool which you can use to generate language-idiomatic, statically-typed TS SDKs from any public OpenAPI schemas. We hope to continue iterating on this to give devs a way to easily generate high fidelity client SDKs for all the major languages. Inspiration for this product is from past experiences struggling with OpenAPI. I was originally optimistic about using the OpenAPI tools to build out our offering,…

    2022 · easysdk.xyz · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Generate and share OpenAPI specs with AI

    2025 · api.dev · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    liblab▲446

    Generate better SDKs for your API

    2024 · liblab.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Leading Open Source API Development Platform for HTTP, REST, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, and WebSockets

    2017 · insomnia.rest · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hi everyone - Looking for feedback for this new open source project we launched. It's called DevPod and it's built on the devcontainer.json standard to create reproducible dev environments. It lets you spin up dev environments in any infra, kind of like a Terraform but for dev environments. Compared to hosted services such as Github Codespaces, JetBrains Spaces, or Google Cloud Workstations, DevPod has the following advantages: - Open Source: DevPod is 100% open-source and extensible. A provider doesn’t exist? Just create your own. - Client-only: No need to install a server backend. DevPod…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Cortexfree▲306

    Turn API specs into docs, SDKs, and MCP servers

    Sep 2026 · cortexdocs.dev · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Sparrow▲456

    The lightest and fastest platform for API testing

    2025 · sparrowapp.dev · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    PS: Assuming a REST architecture.

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Leading Open Source API Development Platform for HTTP, REST, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, and WebSockets

    2020 · insomnia.rest · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Create beautiful powerful documentation, hassle-free.

    2018 · developerhub.io · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Handwritten SDKs generated from OpenAPI

    2024 · speakeasy.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hi Hacker News! Patrick and Elias here. We built an SDK / Documentation generator for REST APIs. The link included shows the shiny output of our system: the docs! We generated 5 SDKs and docs from the Hacker News OpenAPI we found on GitHub. If you write code in Python, Typescript, Go, Ruby, or Rust, we’d love for you to try an SDK out! If you want to generate SDKs for your own API try our tool here: https://github.com/Sideko-Inc/sideko We are both software engineers, and we built this tool because we were spending too much time writing API integrations, supporting…

    2023 · hacker-news.sideko.dev · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Instantly generate openapi (OAS) 3.0.0 REST + GraphQL APIs

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    DevPod▲128

    Codespaces but open-source, client-only, and unopinionated

    2023 · devpod.sh · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    Octri.dev▲136

    Octri provides API teams a single platform to publish docs, generate SDKs, add MCP access, and monitor APIs in production. API Studio includes editable API docs with Ask the Docs, agent-readable docs, custom guides, code examples, and an API playground. SDK Studio generates clien

    Sep 2026 · octri.dev · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    🧜‍♀️ RESTful rendering pipeline for generating sequence and UML diagrams using Mermaid for Markdown docs (Diagrams as a Service) - Schachte/Mermrender

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hey HN! We've developed OpenAPI AutoSpec, a tool for automatically generating OpenAPI specifications from localhost network traffic. It’s designed to simplify the creation of API documentation by just using your website or service, especially useful when you're pressed for time. Documenting endpoints one by one sucks. This project originated from us needing it at our past jobs when building 3rd-party integrations. It acts as a local server proxy that listens to your application’s HTTP traffic and automatically translates this into OpenAPI 3.0 specs, documenting endpoints, requests, and…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20WM
  21. 21

    Hi HN! We’re excited to share our new code generator that lets you ship high-quality TypeScript SDKs, that your users will love, from your OpenAPI documents. Our ongoing goal is to help you build one SDK that runs anywhere modern JavaScript runs. This includes new runtimes like Deno and Bun in addition to the ever-popular Node.js. Additionally, the popularity of AI has meant server-sent events and file streaming are also commonplace - we wanted to cover these use cases too. This explosion in new runtimes and ways of interacting with APIs shifts cognitive burden on API developers often having…

    2024 · speakeasyapi.dev · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    Konfig▲87

    Generate SDKs, docs, demos & tutorials for your REST API

    2023 · konfigthis.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Our API Management platform is fast, scalable, modern. Including an open source API Gateway, Analytics, Dev Portal and Dashboard

    2014 · tyk.io · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Simple online database service in the cloud with NoSQL, REST API, low code javascript hooks, MongoDB support and more. Perfect for API automation, custom development, enterprise, backoffice, serverless backends, database driven websites. It provides easy collaboration and data management with secure

    2016 · restdb.io · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →