Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. We've built a funny GitHub Wrapped video summary for developers launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1
   Free and open-source home for art made with code▲144

   Browse and share GPU-made GIFs. Explore GLSL shader experiments, search by topic, and open any piece in the editor to learn or remix.

   2018 · shadergif.com · its alternatives →

2. 2
   GIF.new▲18

   i use GIFs a lot in my personal/professional life and so I'm pretty passionate about the topic :P about a month ago I found out that this domain was available and couldn't believe it. Waited a good 3 weeks to pull the trigger on buying it (which, btw is hella expensive by default) and in the meantime, hopped from one idea to another on what it should house. original idea was to build some kind of prompt-to-GIF service but very soon realised that i can't sustain the AI bill on my budget (top contender was to use runway). then came the idea of animating charts from data (obvious: i work…

   2025 · gif.new · its alternatives →

3. 3WM
   We made a low-budget ‘how it works’ video. What do you think?▲34

   http://youtu.be/nT8xXIdwDGo

   2013 · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Fancy Components▲38

   Hi there, friends! I built a fun side-project called Fancy Components to explore and recreate some of the more unique, funky, unconventional, and sometimes useless UI designs & microinteractions you might see around the web. Built (mostly) with React, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, and Motion (formerly Framer Motion). Just copy the source code into your project, and you’re good to go. Each component includes examples, demos and also a documentation to help you understand how it works and built. It’s 100% free and open-source!

   2025 · fancycomponents.dev · its alternatives →

5. 5IM
   I made a browser TUI with its own layout engine▲6

   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 →

6. 6
   I built a browser-based 3D editor since I didn't want to learn Blender▲8

   process demo - https://i.redd.it/fbhlwsq1gcmg1.gif render demo - https://i.redd.it/smddwtryhcmg1.gif I love making creative software. I spent a few years making pixel art software but recently have gotten into 3d animation and 2d animation and really wanted a way to realize crazy ideas. Blockbench didn't feel quite right, spline is super well made but felt catered too much to just idle website animations, and I really didn't want to fall down a master class in Blender just to make some silly stuff. While I'm definitely not discounting Blender's literal…

   Mar 2026 · app.topomaker.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Leetcode but for front end devs (terrible idea?)▲8

   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 →

8. 8
   I made an open-source Replit▲9

   I spent the past few weeks making an open source cloud code editing environment with an AI copilot and multiplayer collaboration! It's fully self-hostable in 5-10 minutes. There's a lot of minor improvements to be made, and some are already listed in the Github issues. Let me know what you think and feel free to try it out.

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9E
   ExcaliHub▲9

   Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

   2024 · excalihub.dev · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Using ThreeJS to create a city from Your GitHub contributions▲9

    I spent some time making this. I am a beginner with blender but I did my best :) I'm open to any and all feedback.

    2022 · honzaap.github.io · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Browser-based video compositor built on WebGPU▲5

    GitHub: https://github.com/Sportinger/MasterSelects I built this Browser-based video compositor with a GPU-first architecture. No Canvas 2D in the rendering path — video textures go in as texture_external (zero-copy), compositing runs through a ping-pong WGSL shader pipeline, and export captures frames directly from the GPU canvas via WebCodecs. 39 GPU effects, 37 blend modes, nested compositions, keyframe animation with bezier curves, vector masks, 10-band live EQ, video scopes, and AI-driven editing via GPT function calling. 13 production dependencies. The compositor,…

    Feb 2026 · masterselects.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    InstantGradient▲9

    Hi HN, I think mesh gradients are cool, I use them a lot, probably too much. So I made a simple tool that puts one behind my screenshots. No watermark, no sign-up, I just paste my screenshot, select my current favorite color palette, I add an unhealthy amount of grain texture, and hit "copy". Lots of aspect ratios available. I also made a Canvas tool to make more advanced designs with optionally transparent background. Do check it out and tell me what you think

    Apr 2026 · instantgradient.com · its alternatives →

13. 13
    I built a tool that creates videos out of React code▲6

    The one-liner: You give it a script, it generates a portrait video in 10 minutes. No stock footage, no templates—it writes code that renders as video. ## Why I built this We were building game dev courses at Outscal and needed to produce a lot of video content fast. Traditional video production was slow. AI video generators looked weird. So we tried a different approach: what if video was just code? Turns out it works. We can replicate specific art styles, and the output is consistent and editable. ## What it can do - Generate 30-60 second shorts from a script - Match specific visual styles…

    Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

14. 14IV
    I've been building this thing▲9

    ...it's an image proxy that does on-the-fly image processing for animated GIFs. This is the site: https://www.gifsonic.com And here are docs with examples: • https://www.gifsonic.com/docs/ • https://www.gifsonic.com/docs/example/?t=width • https://www.gifsonic.com/docs/example/?t=height • https://www.gifsonic.com/docs/example/?t=reverse • https://www.gifsonic.com/docs/example/?t=background_color •…

    2017 · its alternatives →

15. 15
    I made a tool that turns images into videos to boost our Twitter reach▲9

    Recently there were some changes to the Twitter algorithm and one of the most important ones was boosting video content even more in the feed, which got me thinking: "Why shouldn't we benefit from the algo changes and get a boost every time we are sharing some visuals?" So I spent the weekend building a tool that: - Turns your images into videos - Has 30 beautiful animated gradients that we can pick from - Is completely FREE I'd love to know your thoughts about it!

    2023 · clippulse.com · its alternatives →

16. 16TO
    Too old to apply to YC but I made this anyway▲9

    LégalEd for the Masses Title links to actual app Here is the demo video to show you around the interface Self funded on scraps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwsPz0mKAU

    2025 · labs.sunami.ai · its alternatives →

17. 17CT
    Clpstr - The Instafilm we never finished.▲7

    Built this at a Startup Weekend last November. We've been sitting on this code for months. Would love to have some people signup and throw us a little feedback. Clearly this isn't finished, but with a little crowd support, we could just wrap it up in a weekend. A few things: - Works with Youtube and Vimeo, probably a few others. - Web UI is still pretty sloppy - zero onboarding. sorry. - We have native iPhone and iPad clients that are a handful of bugs from being shipped. Anyone interested in beta testing them, shoot me an email at ddinch :at: gmail. We will beam you up via TestFlight (great…

    2011 · clpstr.com · its alternatives →

18. 18YA
    Yet another "my first open-source project" thread. Feedback, please?▲7

    I must say I was encouraged to post my project here when I saw the positive response to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3780731 Before you make any comments, please keep in mind that the project is written for fun. I'm not forcing anyone to use it. In fact, nobody should use the current unstable version in a serious project. Here is the link: http://github.com/bsg/libserv Please share your thoughts. All criticisms are welcome, even the harsh ones. p.s. The project is still a work-in-progress.

    2012 · its alternatives →

19. 19AF
    A framebuffer console viewer, pure Go▲7

    Another Sunday afternoon project: add some pizzaz to your boring bare metal or virtual machine consoles! Written as a single Go binary; no dependencies. https://github.com/Fusion/modernfbv As usual, feedback please!

    2022 · its alternatives →

20. 20
    I made a tool for converting text snippets to shareable image▲8

    Hey guys, I needed a way to convert Code, CSV, and Markdown snippets to shareable images so I built this over the weekend. It all runs locally in the browser using a few lines of jQuery. Nothing fancy. Sharing in case someone else might find it useful!

    Mar 2026 · snip2img.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    I made website animations easy▲6

    Hey there! I'm Sami. Over the past year, I've been busy building apps for clients, and I always found it challenging to discover a great animated component library. So, I took it upon myself to learn how to create beautiful animations. It was tough at first, but with persistence and a lot of practice, I eventually started crafting some really impressive animations for my clients! Now, I'm excited to share some of my favorite creations with you on my platform, DynaUI. I'd love to hear what you think!

    2024 · dynaui.design · its alternatives →

22. 22IH
    I hype drivingly recreated my website and it was awesome▲7

    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 →

23. 23
    Built an AI ad generator and ran $9K of FB ads with it▲6

    Been in the AI image gen space since 2023, before even GPT image gen was a thing, and after spending ~9K on Facebook ads for my own projects (made a video about that actually) I realized the thing I kept getting stuck on was the creatives themselves. I'm horrible at making reels-type video ads and Canva even with templates is surprisingly complicated for ad-specific stuff, plus everything ends up looking the same as everyone else using the same templates. Made a video going into detail about the full FB ads journey if anyone's interested:…

    Mar 2026 · admakeai.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Vid2gif – Convert .mp4/.mov to optimized GIFs locally using FFmpeg▲6

    As I worked on my personal projects, I kept running into the same problem: There wasn’t a simple, local way to convert screen recordings into GIFs that look clean in a README.md. Recordings don’t render inline on GitHub READMEs, and I didn’t want to rely on bulky video editors or upload my files to some sketchy ad-filled site. So, I wrote a small script. I found myself using it so often that I turned it into a proper tool: minimal, local, and built for developers who care about good documentation. I’m not some elite hacker — just a dev who wanted a better way to share demos. Thought others…

    2025 · github.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 →