AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Turtle – Web Browser written from scratch for 2 years
A few weeks ago I posted my solo browser projects and since I have received lots of messages asking the download link. I was a bit reluctant to release it since it's not at a stable level yet. However I finally decided to just put it out there as a pre-alpha since so many emails I have received. So now you can grab this pre-alpha from https://code.intellios.ai/cwbrowser/ Note: Expect bugs, missing features, and crashes. Plenty of the web will render imperfectly or not at all. This is an early look, not a daily driver.
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
Turtle is a macOS web browser whose rendering engine — HTML parser, CSS cascade, layout and paint — is written completely from scratch in Zig, with Google
Jul 2026 · code.intellios.ai · its alternatives →
- 2IM
I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc). Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I…
2022 · battle-of-flags.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Hi HN! Thanks for your attention to my post. It was a big challenge to run most of Node.js packages in browser, fast moreover. Virtual File system, resolve import/export. I got cold many times, depressions, burned out, yet still alive and finished it. Many guys helped me with an advice. Many users give a lot of positive feedback. There are 200,000 monthly unique users. I work full time now because of the freemium business model. To be honest - I am happy after many years of hard work.
2022 · playcode.io · its alternatives →
- 4
Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Owl Browser▲145I've been working on browser automation infrastructure for a while and kept hitting the same ceiling: Playwright and Puppeteer are great for scripting but fall apart when you need stealth at scale. Cloud-based solutions like Browserbase work but you're sending all your data to a third party and can't control the environment. So we built Owl Browser, a self-hosted Chromium-based engine that runs in a single Docker container. The core technical problem we tried to solve was fingerprint consistency. Most browser automation tools either ignore fingerprinting entirely or apply surface-level…
Jan 2026 · owlbrowser.net · its alternatives →
- 6IM
Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026 · its alternatives →
- 7MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 8
Showcase of web experiments written by creative coders
2015 · experiments.withgoogle.com · its alternatives →
- 9
An experimental minimalist WebBrowser. Contribute to hexapode/zenbrowser development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10KY
Hey HN! I wanted to practice "vibe coding" and see how far and fast I can go by only prompting, without actual coding. I decided to make a simple CLI app that scrapes web docs into a single md file (I was annoyed that LLM keeps writing Tailwind 3 code for a Tailwind 4 project). In just a couple of hours, the CLI app was ready! Then iterated on arguments for another couple of hours. Result: https://github.com/vladstudio/web2llm Then I decided to go further and "productize" the CLI by making a web app for it. Another half-day, and the web app is ready!…
2025 · web2llm.dev · its alternatives →
- 11CC
Hello HN! Back in 2023, I introduced CFRS[], a minimalist drawing language with turtle graphics, featuring just six simple commands, through a "Show HN" post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37956065). Since then, I've received a number of creative patterns and animations created using this tiny, esoteric language by the small and friendly community that has since formed around it. In this post, I intend to share some of these interesting creations with everyone to highlight the ingenuity of their creators. If you create an interesting demo using this language, please…
2025 · its alternatives →
- 12
Hi HN! This is my first game — something I’ve always wanted to do. It’s a small browser game built with Phaser 3, React, and the phaser template (https://github.com/phaserjs/template-react-ts/). I made it in 2 days (like 8 hours in total real time) using gemini-cli. About 90% of the code was generated with AI, but I learned a lot by making fine tweaks. It only works on PC since it’s a typical WASD + R (reload) shooter. I’d love feedback on: - Gameplay (is it fun, too hard?) - Ideas for new features Thanks in advance! ps: I used cubes as a prototype, but now I kind of…
2025 · cubic-zombies.pages.dev · its alternatives →
- 13MF
Hi! Long time reader, first time submitter. I've finallllyy got my first webapp online. It's been a long time coming, I started it over a year ago and just been an hour here, a couple of hours here, and a period of a couple of months of nothing. I first wrote it as a way to learn some python it sort of grew to fill a need I had. It's at a point now where I'd LOVE some feedback as I am going round in circules. Please, it's free, just hit the home page, plugin in a name/email and url you want to links checked on. If you use the name 'DeleteMe' I will remove the account after a week, so feel…
2012 · sitecrawl.net · its alternatives →
- 14
If you clicked because of the title, congratulations. It's indeed not fake - I genuinely didn't use any third-party libraries, everything is built using Web APIs and Rust's built-in libraries. Regarding how this project came about - I got quite angry when a browser new tab extension I frequently used got poisoned/had a backdoor implanted. Thus this project was born. As there are still some issues currently, everyone is welcome to provide suggestions and report bugs. It's been open source on Github for a while now - if anyone's interested, feel free to check it out. Thank you all, and…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Hey HN! Last week I was working on a website and needed a way to synchronise visuals with live music. I've used MIDI controllers for this before, but I am travelling right now and don't have mine with me. So I had the crazy idea to build a browser extension that uses the keyboard as input and includes a sequencer. I gave myself 24 to work on it. It ended up taking longer (of course), specially since I ended up creating a demo, a small landing, docs, and an intro video. Took me one week from idea to launch (pushed quite a bit tbh). Features: - Works as a browser extension. Atm distributed…
2024 · minitap.io · its alternatives →
- 16IH
Hello HN, I had some christmas free time over the last two weeks (Merry Christmas btw ;-)) and used that time to completely recreate the website of my app[1]. I used all the fancy new tools. I didn't know some of them when I started. What was my goal? * Pretty website * Blazing fast * Mobile first * SSR * Webp support * Generally all the best website practices (high lighthouse score) What did I use? * Tailwindcss (https://tailwindcss.com/) * Tailwind Components (https://tailwindui.com/) * React (https://reactjs.org/) * ViteJs…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 17AW
I’ve spent the last few days prototyping a browser-based game engine stack designed for instant-load, "Roblox-for-Teens" style deployment. The goal is to lower the floor for AA indie devs who want high-fidelity physics and instant web distribution without the overhead of Unity or a heavy Godot export. The Stack Engine: A headless WASM/WebGPU implementation. I’m currently using custom flags and selective streaming to bypass standard browser memory and execution limits. Physics: I’ve ported Jolt (Guerrilla Games) but modified the solver to mimic the original Blam! engine (Bungie/Halo…
Jan 2026 · its alternatives →
- 18MF
Progressive Web App, "Finding Nora": https://nora.now.sh/ It was also my first attempt at TypeScript + React. Preliminary conclusion: Getting started is a bit slower and the code more verbose, but refactoring become sooo much easier. And: Almost no need to reload and debug anymore. Once TypeScript is satisfied with my code it generally just works. Source code and more information can be found here: https://github.com/vnglst/finding-nora
2018 · its alternatives →
- 19
Recently several AI labs have published experiments where they tried to get AI coding agents to complete large software projects. - Cursor attempted to make a browser from scratch: https://cursor.com/blog/scaling-agents - Anthropic attempted to make a C Compiler: https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler A few weeks ago I posted xmloxide, an agent-made Rust replacement for libxml2 made by pointing Claude code at the libxml2 test suite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47201816 curl is arguably the most widely deployed…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
I'm Tyler - the solo operator of Quanta Intellect based in Portland, Oregon. I recently participated in Nous Research's Hermes Agent Hackathon, which is where this project was born. I've used agents extensively in my workflows for the better part of the last year - the biggest pain point was always the browser. Every tool out there assumes a human operator with automation bolted on. I wanted to flip that - make the agent the primary driver and give the human a supervisory role. Enter: Vessel Browser - an Electron-based browser with 40+ MCP-native tools, persistent sessions that survive…
Mar 2026 · quantaintellect.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Howdy friends! Tell me if this is an atrociously terrible idea - I've been working on building a leetcode for clientside devs so we can practice React and Javascript interview questions in a more concise way, I call it clientside.dev I just finished a beta version of it yesterday and plan on releasing it with many more problems on Jan 1st but it's there if you wanna play with it open to any ideas / feedback however mean or nice it may be :)
2022 · vacation-call-335691.framer.app · its alternatives →
- 22
Hey HN! I develop browser extensions, I suck at web design, and I've been exploring AI/LLMs. With my new found free-time since dropping work hours, I've developed a Design Copilot browser extension [0]. It does what it says on the tin - you choose a part of your website and the tool gives you instant expert design feedback - "change this font to that, add this much whitespace, use brighter colours .... etc" The tool is completely 100% free to use, its powered by bringing your own AI API Key, and the current LLM it uses is Google Gemini 1.5 Pro. I've yet to hit the free rate-limit and I…
2024 · old.reddit.com · its alternatives →
- 23
A while ago I started this side project to test if I could build a rich User Interface that would have about the same level of responsiveness than a "SPA-like" app, but using only htmx[1]... I still have plenty of stuff in my roadmap, but today it's in a playable state and I thought it could be interesting to share it - as it may be a nice demonstration of a relatively rich user interface powered by htmx :-) --> https://zakuchess.com As for the stack: it's built mostly with Django, htmx and Tailwind CSS. It uses a SQLite database, and is hosted (for free) at Fly. The characters'…
2024 · zakuchess.com · its alternatives →
- 24
TDYCODER▲7I made this because I'm tired of paying for Windsurf. It's not perfect and still in very early access, so please be kind and write me your feedback on my Discord the link is on GitHub!
2025 · github.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 →