AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Serverless async back ends for compute-heavy operations
Hi HN, we’re Jessie and Eric. We’ve been baking away at Cakework (https://www.cakework.com/), which is a way to build async backends without needing to manage cloud infrastructure. Cakework is for operations that take time or more compute, like file processing, report generation, or machine learning. Devs write backends as Python functions and deploy them with our CLI. They use our client SDKs to make requests, get status, and get processing results. Each request runs with its own CPU and memory parameters in its own microVM, with no timeouts. Devs can query for failures and…
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. Serverless async back ends for compute-heavy operations launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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Serverless Cloud▲283Build full stack apps better and faster than everyone else
2022 · serverless.com · its alternatives →
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Render▲318Hey 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 →
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Create a serverless cloud backend with a database and API functions in few minutes! Zero maintenance required, instant provisioning, High availability & Scalability, Woldwide CDN with 113 POPs. 24/7 Professional support.
2017 · cloudbackend.appdrag.com · its alternatives →
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Xano▲390Hi HN — I’m Daniel, DevRel at Xano. Three years ago, Xano started as an internal tool at a software agency. We were rebuilding the same backend infrastructure for every client—auth, databases, APIs, file storage, scaling, security—over and over again. To save time, the team built a platform that could generate production-grade backends in days instead of months. That internal tool evolved into Xano, which now powers products used by both startups and large enterprises. Companies like Deriv, an online trading broker with over 3 million customers, use Xano to ship features faster without…
2021 · xano.com · its alternatives →
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Backendless▲99Build scalable apps at lightning speed, coding optional
2023 · backendless.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! Today we're launching ActorCore (https://actorcore.org/), a stateful serverless framework that enables deploying Cloudflare Durable Object-like workloads to any cloud. If you're unfamiliar with stateful serverless: it's like the actor model, where each actor maintains its own isolated, persistent state. (Think Lambda functions with local storage & runs indefinitely.) It enables easily building long-running, realtime, durable, or local-first backends with the flexibility of serverless infrastructure. The most widely used implementation is Cloudflare Durable Objects,…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi, I’m Mikkel and I’m building Async, an open-sourced developer tool that combines AI coding with task management and code review. What Async does: - Automatically researches coding tasks, asks clarifying questions, then executes code changes in the cloud - Breaks work into reviewable subtasks with stack diffs for easier code review - Handles the full workflow from issue to merged PR without leaving the app Demo here: https://youtu.be/98k42b8GF4s?si=Azf3FIWAbpsXxk3_ I’ve been working as a developer for over a decade now. I’ve tried all sorts of AI tools out there including…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Create and deploy serverless cloud functions instantly, all from the browser.
2021 · napkin.io · its alternatives →
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Chunk co-founder here. We spent the last 2 weeks building this to scratch our own itch: As developers, we often have problems that could be solved just by running a few lines of code. Sometimes, running this code on your local machine is fine. But other time, the code need to run automatically reacting to external events or to run continuously, which means, it needs to run on a server somewhere. So now, you have to find a cloud provider, to package or build the code and finally to deploy it. All of that for what could be literally be 4 lines of code. We couldn’t find an easier way to do…
2022 · chunk.run · its alternatives →
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Hello HN, I’ve always loved building frontend-only apps—those you can prototype over a weekend, host for free on GitHub Pages, and scale to millions of users. Unfortunately, AI-enabled apps complicate things, as exposing your OpenAI key to the world is obviously a no-go. This also means mobile developers often have to run their own servers. That’s why I built ServerlessAI, an API gateway that lets you securely call multiple AI providers directly from client side using OpenAI-compatible APIs. You can authenticate users through any identity provider, like Google or Apple, and set per-user…
2024 · serverlessai.dev · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! We’re Yann, Edouard, and Bastien from Koyeb (https://www.koyeb.com/). We’re building a platform to let you deploy full-stack apps on high-performance hardware around the world, with zero configuration. We provide a “global serverless feeling”, without the hassle of re-writing all your apps or managing k8s complexity [1]. We built Scaleway, a cloud service provider where we designed ARM servers and provided them as cloud servers. During our time there, we saw customers struggle with the same issues while trying to deploy full-stack applications and APIs resiliently. As…
2023 · koyeb.com · its alternatives →
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A lightweight engine for durable execution / deterministic workflows I built with Rust, wasmtime and the WASM Component Model. Its main use is running reliable, long-running workflows that can automatically resume after failures. Looking for feedback on the approach and potential use cases!
2025 · obeli.sk · its alternatives →
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Boxes.devfree tier, from $19/mo▲112Hi HN, we’re Nick and Drew, and we’re building boxes.dev – the first cloud-only agentic dev environment (ADE) that gives every Codex and Claude Code agent its own cloud computer. We’re two engineers who previously built Gem (co-founder/CTO and first hire), and we spent the last year coding almost exclusively using Codex and Claude Code. It’s been a huge change to how we code, and it’s been exhilarating seeing the models keep getting better – but we eventually realized that developing on localhost was holding us back: - Git worktrees are clunky to set up and use for parallelizing work -…
Jun 2026 · boxes.dev · its alternatives →
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8base delivers an AI-first solution that simplifies your journey from idea to working software application. | Ask us how.
2019 · 8base.com · its alternatives →
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2014 · team.s4y.us · its alternatives →
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Mar 2026 · hyper.dev · its alternatives →
- 24CA
2018 · coherenceapi.com · 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 →