Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Full graphical desktop running on a 128MB VPS Alpine+XRDP+WindowMaker
This idea has been floating in my head for about 10 years. Some of you might remember LowEndSpirit.com back before it became a forum, I started that. I've been obsessed with making tiny, cheap VPS actually useful ever since. TierHive is my attempt to make 128MB VPS great again :) It's a NAT VPS (KVM) platform with true hourly billing. Spin up a server, use it for 3 hours, delete it, pay for 3 hours. No monthly commitments, no minimums beyond a $5 top-up. The tradeoff is NAT (no dedicated IPv4), but I've tried to make that less painful: - Every account gets a /24 private subnet with full…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1Agent 37▲401
Hey HN, I noticed there are 1,000+ MCP skills on GitHub with zero way for creators to charge for them. So I built Agent37. Selling Claude skills today means asking customers to download your skill, set up Claude Code on their laptops, configure MCP servers, and pray it works. No trial, no updates, often you're just handing over the source. Agent37 lets creators upload a skill, share a link, and anyone can try it instantly (no Claude account needed). Built-in Stripe, creators keep 80%. Looking for feedback on the approach. Would you use something like this?
Mar 2026 · agent37.com · its alternatives →
- 2

hey guys. the other day i was migrating hosting providers and i just needed something not too heavy and convenient to spin up my backups for awhile and realised there is almost nothing out there. kimchi hasn't been updated for years and cockpit is heavy. so here's something i came up with in a couple hours because of a sudden urge, nothing fancy just basic creation with cloud init, lifecycle management and image/storage, but it's modern-ish and it compiles to a 8.4mb binary inclusive of the embedded web UI, CLI and API, and only dep is libvirt.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3

I do fullstack dev for work and side projects and recently moved everything to a couple VPSs on hetzner. Great setup, low cost, but one thing kept bugging me, how do I know if something is down without manually sshing in all the time? I tried the grafana + prometheus stack but the configuration time and seeing it use more resources than my actual apps was rough. Tried some smaller solutions too but nothing felt right. So I said screw it and built exactly what I wanted. tori is a single go binary that runs on your server, reads host metrics from /proc and /sys, monitors containers…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4

Hi, over the past few months I've been working on this project: Numax is a small Rust runtime that does three things: it runs WebAssembly modules in a sandbox, has a built-in local key-value store, and syncs everything across nodes with CRDTs and gossip. Basically, you write a wasm module, run it on two machines, and they converge (I hope !). It's a decentralized system... I hope someone finds it interesting! There's a whitepaper I've put a lot into, and I think the code isn't bad either! I believe there's still room in this world for software that's fun and well made, and while building…
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Hi HN, I’m one of the devs behind StarDesk, a P2P-first remote desktop we’ve been building for ~1 year. We started this partly out of frustration: some popular RDP tools haven’t seen meaningful updates in a long time, and long-standing issues are often left unaddressed. As devs, we really dislike software that stagnates once it “works well enough”. StarDesk is our attempt to do it differently. What we focus on: -P2P by default (relay as fallback) -Low RTT + low jitter > chasing max bitrate -Encoder / input path tuned for real-time interaction -Modern E2EE (TLS/DTLS) UX-wise, setup…
Jan 2026 · stardesk.net · its alternatives →
- 6

Over the past few months, as we scaled our internal AI Agents, we hit a dead end: Running LLM-generated arbitrary code in Docker is basically running naked on security due to container escape risks. But using full traditional VMs takes minutes to boot and eats too much memory to support high-density concurrency. We loved the developer experience of SaaS sandboxes on the market, but they are closed-source, expensive, and have too high a barrier to entry for self-hosting. So, our team decided to build our own. After months of grinding, using RustVMM and KVM, we built a blazing-fast,…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
wsgrok▲7I built it for myself because ngrok didn't let me add one more domain unless I paid $12 more. I probably should've looked for alternatives before building my own, but my grudge got in the way . Once I started, I wanted to make it better than the other options. Silly, I know. No one probably cares. I plan to open source it sometime next year because I’ve got other projects to finish first. It's free until I deplete my cloud credits, then it will switch to a tier-based model with a free option.
Jan 2026 · wsgrok.com · its alternatives →
- 8

Since there’s a few discussions recently on $4 VPSes we thought you might be interested in Symbiosis, a cheaper and simpler managed k8s provider. Supported features include external LBs, encrypted+replicated storage and autoscaler. Infrastructure can be managed with UI, CLI, Terraform or Pulumi. Control planes are free of charge and a 1vCPU/2GB node goes for $6 per month. We’re live in Germany right now and we’re expanding into US during 2023. Feel free to try it out and leave a comment.
2023 · symbiosis.host · its alternatives →
- 9

There are plenty of ways to deploy your apps. PaaS options like Vercel or Netlify are convenient but can get pricey as projects scale. VPS hosting is cheaper, but setting it up (Linux, networking, SSL, etc.) can be daunting. That’s why glueh-wyy-huet (https://github.com/glueh-wyy-huet) and I (https://github.com/biersoeckli) built QuickStack during our bachelor studies at Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences. QuickStack simplifies deployment by letting you deploy directly from a Git repo or Docker registry to any VPS. It’s free, open source, and…
2025 · quickstack.dev · its alternatives →
- 10

Frustrated by the complexity and resource drain of multi service monitoring stacks, I built Simon. I wanted a single, lightweight dashboard to replace the heavy stack and the constant need for an SSH client for routine tasks. The result is a resource efficient dashboard in a single Rust binary, just a couple of megabytes in size. Its support for various architectures on Linux also makes it ideal for embedded systems and lightweight SBCs. It integrates: Comprehensive Monitoring: Realtime and historical metrics for the host system and Docker containers (CPU, memory, disk usage, and network…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11

an opinionated blueprint for deploying Forgejo in an OrbStack VM with Ubuntu, PostgreSQL and the tsbridge reverse proxy - highpost/forgejo-appliance
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12

Lemon Casino: ☝️ dowiedz się, jak grać, jak uzyskać świetne bonusy, wszystko o rejestracji 🍋 Specjalne bonusy dla Polaków 💰 Najpopularniejsze sloty, automaty i jackpoty. Najbardziej szczegółowa recenzja!
2017 · deepstreamhub.com · its alternatives →
- 13

Hi HN, I spent the last few months reading the RISC‑V specification to build the lightest possible sandboxes. The idea behind a vpod is to quickly spin up a Linux sandbox from snapshots (Alpine by default) without any setup or subsystem required. The trade-off for portability and security is raw CPU speed. So we don't expect it to match native workloads with Python or pip, for example. More info is in the README https://github.com/capsulerun/vpod Happy to answer any questions!
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14

Hey HN, I built Server Compass because I got tired of two extremes: paying $200+/month to Vercel/Railway for a polished deploy experience, or wrestling with self-hosted panels (Coolify, CapRover, Dokploy) that eat up half my VPS resources just to run their dashboard. The core idea: A GUI SSH client that gives you Vercel-like deployment UX on your own VPS. Nothing gets installed on your server except your apps – every command runs over SSH from your desktop. What it does: - 1-click deploys from GitHub repos or 160+ pre-built templates (Postgres, WordPress, Ghost, Supabase, n8n,…
Sep 2026 · servercompass.app · its alternatives →
- 15

Cheap and powerful VPS hosting with instant deploy
2024 · cloudblast.io · its alternatives →
- 16MV
2015 · kihihosting.com · its alternatives →
- 17

Hi HN, Alexey from Chainstack here. We built Chainstack Self-Hosted to package everything we’ve learned from 8+ years of running blockchain nodes into a single control panel. The goal we’re building this product around is to make blockchain infrastructure boring to operate. The software is free to install. You only pay for the infrastructure you run it on. The quickest way to get hands-on with it is through the Vultr Marketplace or one of the other providers listed in the docs. The current release supports Ethereum Mainnet, Sepolia, and Hoodi with Reth + Prysm full nodes. We’ll be adding…
Jun 2026 · docs.chainstack.com · its alternatives →
- 18IB
Recently moved all of my apps to a $4/mo VPS using Coolify Saved tons of $$, and can self-host my Ghost/Wordpress/Postgres instances etc. Built a tool to help others do the same
2024 · indiehost.io · its alternatives →
- 19

Hey HN, I built Rivestack because managed PostgreSQL with pgvector is either expensive (AWS, GCP) or shared resources (Neon, Supabase free tiers). What it does: - Dedicated PostgreSQL with pgvector pre-installed - Automated backups, monitoring, HA - EU and US-East regions - Free tier for testing Benchmarks on the $29 tier: - 10k vectors: 2,000 QPS, <4ms latency - 1M vectors: 252 QPS, 32ms latency, 98% recall Stack: Hetzner infrastructure, Patroni for HA, pgBackRest for backups. Would love feedback from anyone building RAG or semantic search. Happy to answer questions!
2025 · rivestack.io · its alternatives →
- 20

Hi HN! I've been hacking on this side project for the last month or two with the goal of making it dead simple to use cloud GPUs. I ran into this problem personally during the phd, and built my own tooling around it. I always thought it'd be fun to try to turn that tooling into a more general product... and bitbop.io is the result! All you have to do is run `ssh bitbop.io`, and you get your own personal dev GPU workstation in the cloud. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
2024 · twitter.com · its alternatives →
- 21

Hi HN, I'd like to share a small Go utility I wrote called prxy. The idea was born out of my frustration with accessing my self-hosted services when I'm on the go. I use WireGuard to connect to my homelab, but I really dislike sending all my computer's traffic through my home network — it slows things down and is inconvenient. I wanted proper application-level split-tunneling. A tool I love, wireproxy, got me most of the way there by creating an HTTP proxy from a WireGuard peer. This is perfect for apps that let you configure a proxy. The problem was the other 10%: apps that don't. Think of…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
OpenHub▲13Hi HN We were tired of wasting time setting up open-source apps, so we built OpenHub — a one-click way to deploy 50+ tools like Metabase, n8n, Uptime Kuma, and more. No Docker, no config — just pick an app and it’s live with a public URL. Built it for ourselves, now sharing it with everyone. Would love your thoughts and feedback! https://www.producthunt.com/products/nife-labs/launches/open... Thanks! – Jigar & team
2025 · openhub.nife.io · its alternatives →
- 23
Windows VPS + ISP Proxies for ecommerce sellers & traders
Jun 2026 · unicornvps.com · its alternatives →
- 24
LumaDock▲5European VPS hosting: simple, fast, built to last.
2025 · lumadock.com · its alternatives →
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- I replaced Grafana+Prometheus with a Go binary and SSH for my VPSs alternatives
- Numax - a portable runtime for distributed apps alternatives
- I made StarDesk, P2P low latency remote desktop built for game and work alternatives
- We built a <60ms, open-source alternative to E2B using RustVMM and KVM alternatives
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 →