Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to SAN – a Safe and Nice TOML/YAML Alternative

SAN is a data format designed as an alternative to TOML and YAML. It aims to provide a safer and more user-friendly approach to configuration and data serialization. The format is intended for developers and teams who… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. SAN – a Safe and Nice TOML/YAML Alternative launched in 2018; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1EA
Eno – A lightning fast, user-friendly YAML/TOML alternative▲102
eno [1] - A modern plaintext language w/ libraries [2] for JavaScript, Python, Ruby & soon more! We migrated a big relational research database to a file-based solution - requirements were: - Super fast and easy editability for users - Highest performance for parsing/validating >10K documents on every user change. Our trials with YAML/TOML showed us that we wanted something both faster [3][4] and easier [4], something tailored for file-based content management ... and after months of research & development it's now publicly available (under MIT license) for everyone! Last but…
2018 · its alternatives →
2IM
I made an open-source Bitly alternative▲255
2022 · dub.sh · its alternatives →
3
ut – Rust based CLI utilities for devs and IT▲170
Hey HN, I find myself reaching for tools like it-tools.tech or other random sites every now and then during development or debugging. So, I built a toolkit with a sane and simple CLI interface for most of those tools. For the curious and lazy, at the moment, ut has tools for, - Encoding: base64 (encode, decode), url (encode, decode) - Hashing: md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512 - Data Generation: uuid (v1, v3, v4, v5), token, lorem, random - Text Processing: case (lower, upper, camel, title, constant, header, sentence, snake), pretty-print, diff - Development Tools: calc, json…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
4AP
A plain-text file format for todos and check lists▲452
After having cycled through various CLI-based todo apps, I started to realise that I actually don’t need a tool at all for managing my todos. Most of the time, my use cases are quite simple, like viewing my todo items, checking them off, or adding a new one. Rather than having to memorise CLI commands for these interactions (which I’m not super good at), I figured that it’s easier for me to use my text editor directly, and have an editor plugin help me with the visual structure and some convenience functionality. So, kind-of similar to Emacs Org Mode, but without having to use Emacs. I…
2022 · its alternatives →
5
Comma Separated Values (CSV) to Unicode Separated Values (USV)▲208
crates.io serves as a central registry for sharing crates, which are packages or libraries written in Rust that you can use to enhance your projects
2024 · crates.io · its alternatives →
6
Hexi – Modern header-only network binary serialisation for C++▲118
Over the last few years, I've needed an easy way to quickly serialise and deserialise various network protocols safely and efficiently. Most of the libraries that existed at the time were either quite heavy, had less than stellar performance, or were an abstraction level above what I was looking for. I decided to put together my own class to do the job, starting with an easy, low-overhead way to move bytes in and out of arbitrary buffers. Along the way, it picked up useful bits and pieces, such as buffer structures and allocators that made the byte shuffling faster, often being able to do it…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
7
Qq: like jq, but can transcode between many formats▲115
qq is jq inspired interoperable config format transcoder with interactive querying. It features an optional interactive editor with autocomplete for structured data. And supports inputs and outputs for json, xml, ini, toml, yaml, hcl, tf, and csv to varying degrees of capability.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
A hash array-mapped trie implementation in C▲171
Long-simmering side project that is finally ready to see the light. HAMTs are a cool persistent data structure and implementing one has been a lot of fun. Beyond the code, there is likely some value in the extensive and largely complete implementation docs; basic benchmarks are linked in the README, too. Kind of aiming to be "the libavl for HAMTs". That is obviously a high and aspirational bar but a distinct possibility if it stirs up a little interest and/or contribution. Anyways, it's time for this to go out, collect feedback and maybe even some use outside of toy projects. Let me…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
Concise Encoding – a friendly data format for human and machine▲78
The secure data format for a modern world
2020 · concise-encoding.org · its alternatives →
10
CRML▲130
CRML is a declaritive language for writing cyberrisk as code
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
11
Paradict – Streamable multi-format serialization with schema▲14
Hi HN ! I'm Alex, a tech enthusiast. I'm excited to show you Paradict (https://github.com/pyrustic/paradict), my solution for streamable multi-format serialization. Although JSON, YAML, and TOML are all human-readable, they serve different purposes. For example, TOML is specifically designed for configuration files while JSON is used as a data interchange format. Sometimes an initiative to create a binary version of JSON arises and as far as I know, it ends with an unidirectional mapping of datatypes. There is no silver bullet, yet one coherent solution built from scratch…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
12
Very low footprint JSON parser in portable ANSI C▲111
Very low footprint DOM-style JSON parser written in portable ANSI C - json-parser/json-parser
2012 · github.com · its alternatives →
13
SuperString – A fast and memory-optimized string library for C++▲52
A fast and memory-optimized string library for C++ - btwael/SuperString
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
14
JSON Master▲82
Format, repair, convert, and visualize JSON, XML, YAML, CSV, and TOML. Free developer platform with advanced visualizers and AI-powered syntax repair.
2020 · jsonmaster.com · its alternatives →
15
A simple distributable object-storage system in Go▲19
Simple Object Storage (I wish I could call it Steve's Simple Storage, or S3 ;) - skx/sos
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
16
Linenoise NG – GNU Readline Replacement, with UTF8 and Windows (BSD)▲63
A small self-contained alternative to readline and libedit that supports UTF-8 and Windows and is BSD licensed. - arangodb/linenoise-ng
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
17
rm-safely – A shell alias that moves files to trash instead of deleting▲14
I made rm-safely, a simple shell wrapper that moves files to trash instead of permanently deleting them. It prevents accidental deletions from autocomplete mishaps or hasty rm -rf commands. Should work as a drop-in replacement for rm but safer. Would appreciate any feedback!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
18
USV = Unicode Separated Values▲32
Unicode Separated Values (USV) data markup for units, records, groups, files, streaming, and more. - SixArm/usv
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
Jesth – Next-level human-readable data serialization format▲38
Hi HN! I'm Alex, a tech enthusiast. I'm excited to show you Jesth, a next-level human-readable data serialization format. This project started out as a markup language for writing the docstrings of functions that would ultimately be consumed by a documentation generator. Basically the idea was to split a docstring into sections like Description and Parameters. Each section would consist of a header in square brackets and a body (lines of text between two headers). Here's what a docstring for a sum function would look like: This function takes in two integers a and b and returns their sum.…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
20
KSON, a love-letter to the humans maintaining computer configuration▲34
Hi friends, I'm really excited to introduce KSON, which just entered public beta! Anywhere a human is reading or editing YAML/JSON/TOML, KSON may be used as a more effective interface on that data. If you are such a human, we invite you to participate in this beta. tl;dr Check out the website [1], play with the online playground [2], install the library for your programming language [3], edit in your favorite editor [4], discuss and give feedback [5], contribute to the project [6]. (A personal note about this project: I love software. Machines made of words! Such a wonder. KSON…
2025 · kson.org · its alternatives →
21
Y – A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron▲37
Malleable coding agent app. Use Claude Code and Codex to code and reshape the app itself live. - y-times-y/y
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
22
An expression parser supporting multiple types▲33
This C library is part of a main project aimed at providing a reactive key-value (KV) database. The data is typed (numbers, strings, dates, or booleans) and can include formulas with references to other entries. Clients connected to this database receive a real-time data stream with updates to the subscribed keys, allowing them to react to changes and their dependencies. Essentially, it’s like building a distributed Excel, where data and formulas dynamically update across the system. I couldn’t find any libraries that offered the full set of features I needed for evaluating expressions, so I…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
23
I "built" Sana, a vector DB on object storage▲5
Disclaimer it is a heavily AI assisted project. The goal was not to be the most performative but the kind that's easier to learn from. I wanted to share this in case there are people who had the same idea or wanted to see something like this.
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
24WA
WSL, a clean text format for relational data▲23
2016 · jstimpfle.de · 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 →