Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to HMPL – Small Template Language for Rendering UI from Server to Client

Hi HN! Together with contributors, we've been making a small template language for a year now, which, in our opinion, can replace HTMX and Alpine.js. It is a mix between EJS and Handlebars, that is, you can make a request with a familiar syntax to the server in HTML right in the markup. Requests are made via fetch and are configured via javascript almost entirely, which is what is needed today to work with the server. The very essence of the template language comes down to minimizing the size of the bundle of the original web application by moving the components to the server and then…

HMPL is a lightweight template language designed to render UI components from server to client, combining syntax elements from EJS and Handlebars. It enables developers to make server requests directly in HTML markup… 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
   HMPL▲200

   HMPL.js is a lightweight server-oriented template language for JavaScript. Fetch HTML, render it safely, and keep apps dynamic, modern, and small. Alternative to HTMX and Alpine.js.

   Dec 2025 · hmpl-lang.dev · its alternatives →

2. 2
   HMPL▲2

   Template language for fetching HTML from API

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   htmgo - build simple and scalable systems with golang + htmx▲166

   Hey all, I just wanted to share a project I've been working on for the past month. After years of heavy frameworks, I really like the idea of using htmx, but it’s a little too low level for me and needs a thin layer above it to facilitate things like components, better syntax with complex JS inside of an attribute, etc To try and solve this problem with a very minimal stack (golang + htmx) that I've been really enjoying, I'm building this project to cater to my needs and was thinking it would be useful for other developers.

   2024 · htmgo.dev · its alternatives →

4. 4
   I made a HTMX Playground 100% in the browser▲482

   I recently dug up an old project in an attempt to improve on it. It's a code sandbox for playing around with HTMX in the browser, that runs a mock server within the sandbox iframe. The server "framework" is loosely based on Django, so if you're familiar with Django, you'll immediately understand what's going on. I recommend clicking through the examples. Github repo: https://github.com/lassebomh/htmx-playground Probably my favorite part is the lack of HTMX specific code. It's designed to mimic the client and server, but really nothing else. In principle, this means that…

   2024 · lassebomh.github.io · its alternatives →

5. 5
   htmz – a low power tool for HTML▲1,020

   2024 · leanrada.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   21st.dev▲1,211

   I originally built this app to organize and reuse interesting React + Tailwind components I came across on Twitter, inspired by the shadcn/ui approach. Later, a friend started contributing their own components, and it got me thinking—this could grow into something bigger, like an NPM for design engineers to share and use components. Would love to hear your thoughts!

   2025 · 21st.dev · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Mizu.js – Lightweight HTML templating library for any-side rendering▲225

   Hey HN, I'd like to share a fun project I've been working on: mizu.js. It's a js library that add functional attributes support into your html, designed to be a simple and flexible alternative to fully-fledged web frameworks (such as Vue, React, and Angular), while offering more capabilities than other lightweight options (like Alpine.js and htmx). As it's written using modern ES features and due to its isomorphic nature, it can be run in both browsers and runtimes (Node, Deno, Bun) without any changes. This makes it ideal for client-side and server-side rendering, as well as static site…

   2024 · mizu.sh · its alternatives →

8. 8HW
   Hmpl – work with server-side HTML with ease▲8

   2024 · hmpljs.github.io · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Tailwind UI Templates▲444

   Beautiful Next.js templates built by the Tailwind CSS team.

   2022 · tailwindcss.com · its alternatives →

10. 10TN
    Thi.ng/hdom – S-expression based, pure ES6 UI/VDOM components▲180

    https://github.com/thi-ng/umbrella/blob/master/packages/hdom... Lightweight UI component tree definition syntax, DOM creation and differential updates using only vanilla JS data structures (arrays, iterators, closures, attribute objects or objects with life cycle functions, closures). By default targets the browser's native DOM, but supports other arbitrary target implementations in a branch-local manner, e.g. to define scene graphs for a canvas element as part of the normal UI tree. Benefits: - Use the full expressiveness of ES6 / TypeScript to…

    2018 · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Layouts.dev▲699

    A notebook for building interfaces with Tailwind & shadcn/UI

    2024 · layouts.dev · its alternatives →

12. 12
    Hmpl – work with server-side HTML with ease▲7

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

13. 13BS
    Basecoat – shadcn/UI components, no React required▲146

    Basecoat ports the upcoming shadcn/ui v4 [1] to plain HTML + Tailwind (no React): - Live demo & documentation: https://basecoatui.com - MIT‑licensed and free: https://github.com/hunvreus/basecoat/ - Works with any backend (Flask, Django, Rails, PHP, etc.) or static site. - Fully theme‑compatible with shadcn/ui [2]. - Uses a sliver of Alpine.js only for a few interactive bits (e.g. combobox). Swap in your own JS if you prefer. - Dead simple to use, just drop in a class here and there: Click me Why I built it: after moving from a Next.js stack back…

    2025 · its alternatives →

14. 14HH
    Hibiki HTML – New frontend framework – no scaffolding, no Webpack▲232

    Source https://github.com/dashborg/hibiki | Interactive Tutorial https://playground.hibikihtml.com/tutorial/ I love JavaScript, but for many projects -- especially internal tools and prototypes -- setting up a full frontend JavaScript stack (npm, webpack, babel, create-react-app, redux) and all of their configuration files, folders, and scaffolding is overkill. Hibiki HTML incrementally plugs into any backend, using any template language (even static HTML files) with a single script include. It includes a built-in frontend data model, Vue.js-like…

    2022 · playground.hibikihtml.com · its alternatives →

15. 15UG
    Use Go's HTML/template to write React-like code▲106

    Hi all, I'm currently working on my hobby project, and one of the fun constraints I put in was to build using as less dependencies as possible. I chose Go as it has a really good standard library, and all went well for building backend. But for frontend, I was wondering whether I should break the constraint and go for React. I tried options like Web Components, but I really didn't like the ergonomics and I didn't want to use jQuery either. Out of curiosity, I was exploring Go's html/template package to see if I can write UIs in a React-like manner. I found most of the online docs using…

    2024 · its alternatives →

16. 16
    Templated▲306

    Hey HN! While building our own SaaS we kept running into the same problem: customers wanted a real design editor (think Canva/Figma-lite) *inside* their product, but rebuilding all that UI from scratch is a quarter-million-dollar distraction. So we turned our internal tool into *Templated Embed* — a drop-in image & PDF template editor you can add to any web app with an tag. - What it does? • Full WYSIWYG editor for text, images, SVGs, brand colours, Google Fonts • Outputs static images (PNG/JPG), layered PDFs, or keeps the design JSON so you can re-render via API • Multi-page +…

    2024 · templated.io · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Render▲318

    Hey HN, I'm Anurag, founder and CEO of Render, a cloud for application developers. We've just launched Render Workflows, a way to define durable tasks by decorating plain TypeScript or Python functions and running them on Render without operating queues, worker pools, retry logic, and state management. Code example below [1]. The use cases we have in mind include agent loops, ETL/data pipelines, billing flows, and other long-running jobs. The model is simple: mark an existing function as a Task, deploy the repo as a Workflow, then trigger runs from your application code or via our API.…

    2019 · render.com · its alternatives →

18. 18HH
    HyTags – HTML as a Programming Language▲69

    This is hyTags, a programming language embedded in HTML for building interactive web UIs. It started as a way to write full-stack web apps in Swift without a separate frontend, but grew into a small language with control flow, functions, and async handling via HTML tags. The result is backend language-agnostic and can be generated from any server that can produce HTML via templates or DSLs.

    Jan 2026 · hytags.org · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Bhvr, a Bun and Hono and Vite and React Starter▲128

    Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!

    2025 · bhvr.dev · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Alpine Ajax – If Htmx and Alpine.js Had a Baby▲92

    An Alpine.js plugin that includes the core functionality of HTMX in a streamlined (3KB) API.

    2024 · alpine-ajax.js.org · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Hstream – quick Python web apps – Streamlit alternative using htmx▲104

    I love Streamlit but have run into many situation where taking it from PoC to MVP state is insurmountable. With all the recent HN hype around htmx and sematic html / classless css I decided to build a Streamlit alternative using these on top of FastAPI. This has a couple advantages: 1) easier to extend when you move past PoC since the FastAPI app is exposed (allowing adding more routes) and hstream acts more like a typical web stack 2) with htmx and html (plus MVP.css) doing the heavy lifting the package is alot less complex and easier to reason about - and hopefully more performant…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    µJS, a 5KB alternative to Htmx and Turbo with zero dependencies▲161

    I built µJS because I wanted AJAX navigation without the verbosity of HTMX or the overhead of Turbo. It intercepts links and form submissions, fetches pages via AJAX, and swaps fragments of the DOM. Single tag, one call to `mu.init()`. No build step, no dependencies. Key features: patch mode (update multiple fragments in one request), SSE support, DOM morphing via idiomorph, View Transitions, prefetch on hover, polling, and full HTTP verb support on any element. At ~5KB gzipped, it's smaller than HTMX (16KB) and Turbo (25KB), and works with any backend: PHP, Python, Go, Ruby, whatever.…

    Mar 2026 · mujs.org · its alternatives →

23. 23
    New markup language for fans of Haml and Markdown▲64

    [WIP] Next generation template language for fans of Haml and Markdown - inem/hamdown

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

24. 24BP
    Build progressively enhanced reactive HTML apps using Go and Alpine.js▲127

    Fir leverages Golang’s standard library html/template package and a bit of alpinejs to allow building reactive UIs. You start with plain old html and use alpinejs to enhance it to bring no-page-reload interactivity to web apps. The Fir toolkit is designed for Go developers with moderate html/css & js skills who want to progressively build reactive web apps without mastering complex web frameworks. It includes a Go library and an Alpine.js plugin. How it works ? On receiving user-interactions the fir server re-renders html templates and sends it over the wire where the fir client…

    2023 · livefir.fly.dev · its 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 →