Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

Bonjournal is a travel journal application available as both an iOS app and web platform that allows users to document their trips and experiences. The app is designed for travelers who want to create and organize… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I learned Rails and Objective-C in a year to build this launched in 2014; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1
   Pagecord▲122

   Hey HN I’ve been at a loose end for the past few days so I decided to build a thing. I’m largely devoid of original ideas so I built a (micro-) blogging app with a slight twist: you run it using email. All you need is an email account. No new tools to wrangle. No password to forget. Compose in your favourite email editor and send to a secret address. Pagecord does the rest. It's great for bloggy long-form writing, but it’s maybe even more fun for micro-blogging your thoughts as you would a Twitter feed (you can subscribe to people/blogs using RSS). I figured nobody would pay so it's…

   2024 · pagecord.com · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Wanderlog for iOS and Android▲131

   Mobile-first collaborative travel planner and mapper

   2020 · wanderlog.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app▲126

   Over the last 2-3 weeks, I vibecoded the recipe app that I always wished existed - recipeninja.ai . It now includes a fully interactive voice assistant so you don't need to get your dirty hands over your new iPad when you're cooking. Background: I’m a startup founder turned investor. I taught myself (bad) PHP in 2000, and picked up Ruby on Rails in 2011. I’d guess 2015 was the last time I wrote a line of Ruby professionally. Last month, I decided to use Windsurf to build a Rails 8 API backend and React front-end app, using OpenAI's realtime API for voice-to-voice responses. Over the last few…

   2025 · recipeninja.ai · its alternatives →

4. 4IT
   I travelled cross-country to Startup School only using YC apps▲38

   2012 · backspac.es · its alternatives →

5. 5
   I spent 4 months building Duolingo but for your life▲90

   I initially released this as just an IOS app. Since then it has been growing steadily but a lot of people have emailed asking for a web / android version. It took me nearly 2 months to build a version for the web. The nice thing about using Convex as my backend is that all the data is always synced between the app and web. I do not have to setup any syncing logic. The moment you change something in the app, it will reflect on the web version in realtime. I know there are loads of these kind of tools online but it's starting to feel like mine is actually starting to differentiate itself…

   2025 · three-cells.com · its alternatives →

6. 6MF
   My first webapp - cheatsheets that help you prepare for job interviews▲17

   http://www.littlechits.com<br> This is my first web app; I built this on my own, over the past 4 months, using the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, a few other e-books, and a lot of help from the Stack Overflow community!<br>Feedback would be greatly appreciated, in particular: how can I make this more social?<br>Thanks,<br>Faisal

   2012 · littlechits.com& · its alternatives →

7. 7IW
   I wrote a book on how to make iOS/Android apps with Ruby on Rails▲9

   Hi all! Joe Masilotti here. After 2+ years my book, "Hotwire Native for Rails Developers", is finally available for sale. It contains everything I know about building, shipping, and maintaining iOS and Android apps with Ruby on Rails and Hotwire Native. Always with one simple goal in mind: making it easier for Rails developers to build mobile apps. The book teaches you how to: - Build your first Hotwire Native apps on iOS & Android - Add navigation, modals, and native tab bars - Mix in native screens and components - Send and route push notifications - Ship to physical devices via TestFlight…

   2025 · amazon.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   My First Rails App (currentride.com)▲5

   I needed to get out of localhost:3000 land and ship a (somewhat functional) web app. Anyways, I built Current Ride as a place to put your bucket list items out in the open. The goal is really to inspire the community to do more things! Building the app helped me understand Rails a lot better and allowed me to hack-break-fix bugs/features more effectively :) Enjoy! http://www.currentride.com

   2012 · currentride.com · its alternatives →

9. 9IC
   I cloned a YC funded app in a day as an MVP▲28

   I saw this app youlearn.ai on YC and thought of building it. They are claiming to have 1M+ users with just one feature which is to convert your learning material into summaries, quizzes etc. I gave this a shot and cloned almost most of the features in just 9+ hours of continous vibe coding (with 20% manual though). Now I'm selling this on mvp marketplace. Might probably open source it in future or give it free.

   2025 · ai-tutor.mvpwrappers.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    I created my first mobile app, could use some support▲5

    Hi Everyone, I created a mobile app called Accumoo, and I would appreciate it if y'all can have a look, download and give me a favorable review. Lots of blood, sweat, tears and love went into this app, and I hope you LOVE it as much as I do - it's the app I always needed and wanted. Anyhow, I've been a Rails developer and Software Engineer for a long time, and this is my first stab at a mobile app. It's a "habit tracker" app on steroids that's just fun to use - syncs across devices, local-first architecture - and an easter egg game for good measure. Help a disabled vet out and give it a go.…

    Jan 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

11. 11AI
    all I wanted to do was learn Rails - ended up going way further▲13

    2012 · theindianlist.com · its alternatives →

12. 12MF
    My first web app - SociaLeaks.com - wikileaks for the social scene▲5

    Please have a look at www.socialeaks.com and tell me what you think. This is my first adventure in coding (my background is not CS). I started learning rails about a month ago via railstutorial.org. When I finished that, I felt the best way to continue learning would be to just build an app from scratch. I came up with this concept while observing how crazy the world had gone over WikiLeaks. I thought this was a funny idea. I also thought it would be fun to build! So, here I am. I built this in rails 3 and it is currently living on Heroku. It took me about two weeks to code, doing just about…

    2011 · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Vamoose, one-click hotel and flight finder powered by NLP▲29

    One of my favorite things to do over the weekends is to take a sidestep from full time development of Hitlist, my startup, and poke at other ideas that we’d love to eventually address within the travel space. In 48 hours I get to meet new people, learn about the latest technologies, and build

    2014 · gillian.im · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Sophomore at UMich, built an app with my dad▲9

    Over the past three months, I’ve been working with my dad on this app as a way to learn Cursor, shadcn/ui, and Next.js. I’m currently studying UX design at the University of Michigan, and I’ve been really impressed by how much vibe-coding tools have advanced over the last six months. This work journal includes private AI-generated insights with scheduled summaries that can be shared with your team or manager. You can also choose to make a summary public—like I’ve done here for my work on this web app: https://www.workjourney.ai/summary/mkblt2zt-hn2kdbus If anyone has…

    Jan 2026 · workjourney.ai · its alternatives →

15. 15ND
    Non-dev learning development. Shipping my first project: Favsi▲14

    Hi HN, I'm happy to finally ship my first development project: http://favsi.com. Favsi is a site to share lists of random stuff. Things you probably wouldn't post anywhere else. Like: • Favorite cheesy ninja movies • Favorite original NES games • Favorite songs to sing in the car There's been lots of list-type apps cropping up lately: Bagcheck, ListGeeks, Listry, and probably others. Mini-trend? Some Background: By trade, I've been mostly a business guy [shudders] at startups, but have been working to change that for awhile now. I started learning Ruby a few times last year but had trouble…

    2011 · favsi.com. · its alternatives →

16. 16A2
    After 2 weeks of learning Swift, I've published my first iOS app▲5

    Hi y'all! I am full stack web developer, and recently I started to mess around with Swift. I've been having a lot of fun and I actually build little Countdown app ( I know, how original..), but I just wanted to share it with the world!

    2024 · its alternatives →

17. 17IW
    I wrote a book teaching web app development for non-programmers▲16

    Hey HN, I wrote a book teaching beginner web app development using Django, launching on May 4th (successfully Kickstarted last year.) Website: http://hellowebapp.com Highlights: - Aimed at people who have previous HTML/building websites experience. - Template-first development: see the web app as a website first, before setting up databases and models. - Generic “collection of things” tutorial. Readers are encouraged to create something using this rubric that means something to them (a blog, a directory of people, etc.) Adding creativity will make the material stick better. -…

    2015 · its alternatives →

18. 18
    I built an app to organize fragmented learning▲5

    Hi HN, I built an app to solve a problem I kept running into: I’d read great articles or watch insightful YouTube videos, but within a few days, I’d forget most of what I learned. Taking detailed notes felt like a chore, and I'd rarely revisit them anyway. To solve my own problem, I built Curio. It's an iOS app designed for low-effort capture and active recall. How it works: 1. Share any article or YouTube link to the app. 2. It automatically extracts key ideas as bullet points and links them back to the original context (the specific paragraph or timestamp). 3. The app then generates…

    2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

19. 19LJ
    Learn Java and More Online (My 1st real Rails app)▲15

    I've been working for about 8 months on http://www.Learneroo.com, a site to teach programming and more through challenges. I created the site and all the content on it, and I'm looking for some feedback. Thanks!

    2013 · its alternatives →

20. 20
    My first software project – a website to set goals and track progress▲17

    Two years ago, I started building this site that allows people to document their learning and progress in real time. The idea is: as you learn new things, you document your progress piece by piece, creating a collection of failures, breakthroughs, and knowledge. Along the way, your friends can cheer you on, and the community can give you tips and feedback. Over time, we'll create a public collection on how different problems were solved. With each progress, the site prompts you to reflect on questions like, "If you could go back in time, what do you wish you had known?" This was my first web…

    2024 · opus.cafe · its alternatives →

21. 21
    I made Echo, a interview coach for iOS▲7

    This is the first version of an app idea I had last month as a way to dip my toes into some of the AI APIs. The idea is you can record yourself answering and rehearsing what you'll say to common interview questions, and receive AI feedback on how you did and how you can improve. In the future I may expand into other subject areas, but wanted to scope it to the behavioral interview format for the time being. Super open to feedback and suggestions!

    2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

22. 22MF
    My first Rails app, LinkRawr, Twitter-esque way to find cool links▲5

    I'm getting my feet wet in programming again and wanted to learn Rails. So I followed railstutorial.org (you'll recognize the similarity if you've gone through it yourself) and changed a few fields around and created LinkRawr, a simple site to find and share links. It's here: http://linkrawr.heroku.com It works like Twitter, you follow others' links and people follow your links. You can follow me here: http://linkrawr.heroku.com/Justin I created this over the past couple of days and I'm a relative newbie when it comes to programming, so it's far from a polished project, but I thought I'd…

    2011 · linkrawr.heroku.com · its alternatives →

23. 23AB
    A blog I built with Django and Svelte▲5

    https://rxjourney.com.ng I realize SvelteKit is overkill, but I originally had bigger plans for the blog, before deciding to just keep it simple. Yeah, I had Medium open on a different tab while building. It's going to be a personal blog where I write about my experiences, if you're interested you can subscribe to the newsletter.

    2024 · its alternatives →

24. 24
    A Swift app I made in 4 months with no prior experience▲9

    I have always dreamed of learning Swift and creating apps for iOS, but I never found the motivation to do so. I was scared by the complexity and the learning curve of programming with UIKit and Storyboard. I thought they were too complicated and too boring for me. But then I discovered SwiftUI, the new framework for building user interfaces for Apple platforms. I was captivated by its simplicity and elegance. I watched some videos and read some articles about it and I was blown away by what it could do. I decided to give it a shot and see if I could learn it and make something with it. I set…

    2023 · apps.apple.com · 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 →