Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

Shale is a Ruby object mapper and serializer that converts data between JSON, YAML, and XML formats. It enables developers to structure and transform these data types within Ruby applications. The tool is designed for… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Shale – a Ruby object mapper and serializer for JSON, YAML and XML launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1
   Spice.ai – materialize, accelerate, and query SQL data from any source▲177

   Hi HN, We're Luke and Phillip, and we're building Spice.ai OSS - a lightweight, portable runtime, built in Rust and powered by Apache DataFusion to locally materialize, accelerate, and query data tables sourced from any database, data warehouse or data lake. Phillip and I first introduced Spice on Show HN in September 2021. Since then, we’ve been schooled and humbled in every way building 100TB+ data and ML systems for the https://spice.ai cloud platform. Along with our customers, we struggled with getting fast, low-latency, high-concurrency SQL query within a budget, accessing and…

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Turbolite – a SQLite VFS serving sub-250ms cold JOIN queries from S3▲185

   I built a SQLite VFS in Rust that serves cold queries directly from S3 with sub-second performance, and often much faster. It’s called turbolite. It is experimental, buggy, and may corrupt data. I would not trust it with anything important yet. I wanted to explore whether object storage has gotten fast enough to support embedded databases over cloud storage. Filesystems reward tiny random reads and in-place mutation. S3 rewards fewer requests, bigger transfers, immutable objects, and aggressively parallel operations where bandwidth is often the real constraint. This was explicitly inspired…

   Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Rocky – Rust SQL engine with branches, replay, column lineage▲122

   Hi HN, I'm Hugo. I've been building Rocky over the past month, shipping fast in the open. The binary is on GitHub Releases, `dagster-rocky` on PyPI, and the VS Code extension on the Marketplace. I held off on a broader announcement until the trust-system surface was coherent enough to talk about as one thing. The governance waveplan — column classification, per-env masking, 8-field audit trail on every run, `rocky compliance` rollup, role-graph reconciliation, retention policies — landed end-to-end last week in engine-v1.16.0 and rounded out in v1.17.4 (tagged 2026-04-26). That's the…

   Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Oxyde – Pydantic-native async ORM with a Rust core▲155

   Hi HN! I built Oxyde because I was tired of duplicating my models. If you use FastAPI, you know the drill. You define Pydantic models for your API, then define separate ORM models for your database, then write converters between them. SQLModel tries to fix this but it's still SQLAlchemy underneath. Tortoise gives you a nice Django-style API but its own model system. Django ORM is great but welded to the framework. I wanted something simple: your Pydantic model IS your database model. One class, full validation on input and output, native type hints, zero duplication. The query API is…

   Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   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 →

6. 6
   Feedsmith — Fast parser & generator for RSS, Atom, OPML feed namespaces▲70

   Hi HN! While working on a project that involves frequently parsing a lot of feeds, I needed a fast JavaScript-based parser to extract specific fields from feed namespaces. Existing Node packages were either too slow or merged all feed formats, losing namespace information. So I decided to write it myself and created this NPM package with a simple API. Feedsmith supports all feed formats and many popular namespaces, including: Podcast, Media, iTunes, Dublin Core, and more. It can also parse and generate OPML files. I am currently adding support for more namespaces and feed generation for RSS,…

   2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Flatito, grep for YAML and JSON files▲65

   It is a kind of grep for YAML and JSON files. It allows you to search for a key and get the value and the line number where it is located. I created this tool because I sometimes struggle to find specific keys in typical i18n rails yamls. In the views, you don't always have the whole key, but it is extrapolated from the context. I am sure there are other use cases; I hope you find it useful. Cheers!

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   Hydrogen, a multithread non-blocking Linux server framework in Rust▲154

   Multithreaded, non-blocking Linux server framework in Rust - nathansizemore/hydrogen

   2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9SA
   Silk, a profiling tool for Django▲113

   2014 · mtford.co.uk · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Iron, a fast middleware-oriented Rust web server framework▲81

    An Extensible, Concurrent Web Framework for Rust. Contribute to iron/iron development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Spice.ai▲63

    Hi HN, we’re Luke and Phillip, and we’re building Spice.ai OSS - a lightweight, portable data and AI engine and powered by Apache DataFusion & Ballista for SQL query, hybrid-search, and LLM-inference across disaggregated-storage used by enterprises like Barracuda Networks and Twilio. With v2.0, you can add a real-time analytics node to your operational database with high-throughput native CDC replication. We first introduced Spice [1] on HN in 2021 and re-launched it on HN [2] in 2024 re-built from the ground up in Rust. In 2025 we launched Spice Cayenne [5], our acceleration and query…

    2023 · spice.ai · its alternatives →

12. 12SA
    Spice.ai OSS 1.0 – data query and AI-inference engine built in Rust▲26

    2025 · spiceai.org · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Alloy▲88

    Boilerplate for building web applications with Go (golang)

    2017 · growthmetrics.io · its alternatives →

14. 14AF
    Apache Fory Rust – 10-20x faster serialization than JSON/Protobuf▲67

    Serialization framework with some interesting numbers: 10-20x faster on nested objects than json/protobuf. Technical approach: compile-time codegen (no reflection), compact binary protocol with meta-packing, little-endian layout optimized for modern CPUs. Unique features that other fast serializers don't have: - Cross-language without IDL files (Rust ↔ Python/Java/Go) - Trait object serialization (Box) - Automatic circular reference handling - Schema evolution without coordination Happy to discuss design trade-offs. Benchmarks:…

    Oct 2025 · fory.apache.org · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Tantivy▲68

    A full-text, horse-speed search engine library in Rust

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    LEAR – A simple and fast HTTP server to serve static resources▲66

    Linux Engine for Asset Retrieval - speed-profiled C HTTP server - Glorf/lear

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    gofeed, a robust RSS and Atom Parser for Go▲68

    Parse RSS, Atom and JSON feeds in Go. Contribute to mmcdole/gofeed development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    Open-source serverless security lake powered by Rust + Apache Iceberg▲63

    Open source security data lake for threat hunting, detection & response, and cybersecurity analytics at petabyte scale on AWS - matanolabs/matano

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Python JSON library in Rust, faster than ujson▲40

    Fast, correct Python JSON library supporting dataclasses, datetimes, and numpy - ijl/orjson

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    SPath is a Rust lib for query JSONPath over any semi-structured data▲35

    Query expressions for semi-structured data. Contribute to cratesland/spath development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    I built Wool, a lightweight distributed Python runtime▲15

    I spent a long time working in the payments industry, specifically on a rather niche reporting/aggregation platform with spiky workloads that were not easily parallelized. To pump as much data through our pipeline as possible, we had to rely on complex locking schemes across half a dozen or so not-so-micro services - keeping a clear mental picture of how the services interacted for a given data source was a major headache. This problem always intrigued me, even after I no longer worked at the company, and lead to the development of Wool. If you've worked with frameworks like Ray or…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    JQL – A JSON Query Language CLI Tool Built with Rust▲25

    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

    2020 · crates.io · its alternatives →

23. 23T5
    TensorBase: 5x~10000x Faster Drop-In/Accelerator for ClickHouse in Rust▲19

    2021 · tensorbase.io · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Timber – Structured Logging for Elixir, Ruby and Node▲23

    A lightweight, ultra-fast tool for building observability pipelines

    2017 · timber.io · 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 →