The Top 50 100+ Developer Tools 2019


It’s that time of the year again! 🥁 The 6th Annual StackShare Awards have arrived! 🎉

Check out the 2018 awards if you missed it

This year, we did things a bit differently. First, we lied. This isn't the Top 50 Developer Tools. We've actually outlined the Top 140 tools of 2019 😱 We analyzed over four million data points shared by you- the StackShare community- to bring you these rankings 🤯

Based on your feedback from last year, this time we decided to extend the list of new tools and we've highlighted the top 50 tools that were released in 2019.

We also decided to break down the four major categories we usually divide the rankings by, into 18 smaller categories so you can get a better sense for where similar tools rank relative to competitors.

If this is your first time seeing the StackShare Awards, buckle up because you're in for a ride! 🎢

ICYMI: we announced two new major products in 2019:

  • The StackShare API - the tech stacks behind 1.5M+ companies and counting all available via API, and
  • StackShare Enterprise - the best way for your team to privately map out and share internal tech stacks and technology decisions!

With no further ado, here are the categories for the winners of the StackShare Top Tools Awards 2019:

As always, this is our biggest undertaking of every year- we comb through our enormous data set to find the good stuff- the best tools that you should know about that could transform your workflow. This year we aggregated usage from 300K+ tech stacks , over 1.6M follows , and millions more developer comments, reviews, and votes throughout 2019 (more on methodology below) . Let’s dive in!

New Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: k3s

2019 was the Year of Kubernetes. The ecosystem around k8s has matured to the point that it seemed like a new k8s tool was popping up on GitHub every week (sign up for StackShare Weekly to keep up with this stuff). While Kubernetes itself didn't gain enough adoption to bump Docker or other devops tools that have been around for much longer out of the top 10, the tooling around Kubernetes blossomed in 2019. The coveted top spot for New Tool of the year goes to k3s, a project from Rancher, that's basically a lightweight version of Kubernetes built for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Weighing in at less than 40mb, k3s is a fully compliant Kubernetes distribution. You can check out the project on GitHub or visit the project site at k3s.io.

» Follow k3s | » Tell developers why you chose k3s

#2: Glide

Spreadsheets as a Backend

Create a mobile app from a Google Sheet in 5 minutes, for free

» Glide 's profile | » Glide 's website

#3: K9s

Container Tools

🐶 Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style

» K9s's profile | » K9s's website

#4: Google Cloud Run

Serverless / Task Processing

Run stateless HTTP containers on a fully managed environment or in your own GKE cluster

» Follow Google Cloud Run | » See recent tech decisions about Google Cloud Run

#5: Buefy

JavaScript Framework Components

UI Components for Vue.js Based on Bulma

» Buefy's profile | » Buefy's website

#6: Ludwig

Machine Learning Tools

A code-free deep learning toolbox, by Uber

» Ludwig's profile | » Ludwig's website

#7: Sheety

Spreadsheets as a Backend

Turn your Google Sheet into an API instantly, for free

» Sheety's profile | » Sheety's website

#8: Postwoman

API Tools

API request builder - A free and fast alternative to Postman

» Postwoman's profile | » Postwoman's website

#9: DB

Database Tools

Version control for databases: save, restore, and archive snapshots of your database from the command line

» DB's profile | » DB's website

#10: lazydocker

Container Tools

A free and open source terminal UI for Docker and Docker Compose

» lazydocker's profile | » lazydocker's website

#11: Divjoy

MVC Tools

The React codebase & UI generator

» Divjoy's profile | » Divjoy's website

#12: Pyright

Static Type Checkers

Static type checker for the Python language by Microsoft

» Pyright's profile | » Pyright's website

#13: AresDB

Big Data Tools

A GPU-powered real-time analytics storage and query engine (by Uber)

» AresDB's profile | » AresDB's website

#14: Hydra Framework

Frameworks (Full Stack)

A framework that simplifies development of complex applications (by Facebook)

» Hydra Framework's profile | » Hydra Framework's website

#15: Diez

Open Source Design Tools

Open source design language framework

» Diez's profile | » Diez's website

#16: Google Anthos

Hybrid Cloud as a Service

Bringing the Google Cloud to you

» Google Anthos's profile | » Google Anthos's website

#17: Books

SQL Database as a Service

An immutable double-entry accounting database service (by Square)

» Books's profile | » Books's website

#18: NodeGUI

Cross-Platform Desktop Development

A library for building cross-platform native desktop applications

» NodeGUI's profile | » NodeGUI's website

#19: Amazon CodeGuru

Code Review

Automate code reviews, Identify your most expensive lines of code

» Amazon CodeGuru's profile | » Amazon CodeGuru's website

#20: Cloud Maker

Diagramming

Diagram Driven Infrastructure for Microsoft Azure

» Cloud Maker's profile | » Cloud Maker's website

#21: n8n

Web Service Automation

Open Source Alternative for Zapier

» n8n's profile | » n8n's website

#22: Ola

Javascript UI Libraries

Smooth animation library for interpolating numbers

» Ola's profile | » Ola's website

#23: Dapr

Microservices Tools

An open-source project to make it easier to build microservices

» Dapr's profile | » Dapr's website

#24: React Rainbow

UI Components

Collection of components that will reliably help you build your application in a snap

» React Rainbow's profile | » React Rainbow's website

The Verdict:

In 2019, Square, Facebook, Uber, Microsoft, and plenty of independent developers released some amazing open source tools. This year's top new tools list was again dominated by free OSS. Two clear trends emerged: Kubernetes has officially taken over- with 2 of the top 3 new tools of the year being projects built for Kubernetes. Another trend was the No Code takeover. With two services built on top of Google Sheets and another no-code tool by Uber all in the top 10, it's clear that we're all getting tired of coding 😜

New Tool of the Year: Runner-Up (2019)


You can never have enough new tools. Okay, maybe you can (#stackbloat). But it doesn't hurt to do some window shopping. Below are the next 25 most popular new tools that were released in 2019. In 2019 we added over 1500 new tools (5X the number we added in 2018) to the StackShare database both open source and hosted software as a Service (SaaS). Same as last year, we're willing to bet the house on the fact that you can't get through this list without finding at least one tool you want to try out immediately 😏

#26: .NET for Apache Spark

Machine Learning Tools

Makes Apache Spark™ Easily Accessible to .NET Developers

» .NET for Apache Spark's profile | » .NET for Apache Spark's website

#28: Streamlit

Machine Learning Tools

A Python app framework built specifically for Machine Learning and Data Science teams

» Streamlit's profile | » Streamlit's website

#29: PreVue

Low Code Platforms

All in One Prototyping Tool For Vue Developers

» PreVue's profile | » PreVue's website

#31: Bel

Languages

A new dialect of Lisp, by Paul Graham

» Bel's profile | » Bel's website

#32: Sampler

Shell Utilities

Visualization for any shell command

» Sampler's profile | » Sampler's website

#33: Ackee (Analytics)

General Analytics

Self-hosted, Node.js based analytics tool for those who care about privacy

» Ackee (Analytics)'s profile | » Ackee (Analytics)'s website

#34: Cartography

Security

A tool that consolidates infrastructure assets and the relationships between them (by Lyft)

» Cartography's profile | » Cartography's website

#35: Postgres.js

Database Tools

The Fastest PostgreSQL Client for Node.js

» Postgres.js's profile | » Postgres.js's website

#36: V Programming Language

Languages

A compiled language for developing maintainable software

» V Programming Language's profile | » V Programming Language's website

#37: PreFlight

Browser Testing

Automated Web Testing

» PreFlight's profile | » PreFlight's website

#38: Delta Lake

Big Data Tools

Reliable Data Lakes at Scale

» Delta Lake's profile | » Delta Lake's website

#39: Avo

Analytics Integrator

Minimize Human Errors When Implementing Analytics

» Avo's profile | » Avo's website

#40: Water.css

Front-End Frameworks

A just-add-css collection of styles to make simple websites just a little nicer

» Water.css's profile | » Water.css's website

#41: Ionic React

Cross-Platform Mobile Development

A native React version of Ionic Framework that makes it easy to build apps for iOS, Android, Desktop, and the web as a Progressive Web App

» Ionic React's profile | » Ionic React's website

#42: GitDuck

Realtime Code Collaboration

Video chat for developers with code and terminal sharing

» GitDuck's profile | » GitDuck's website

#43: LinDB

Databases

An open source Time Series Database

» LinDB's profile | » LinDB's website

#44: Message DB

Realtime Backend / API

Microservice native message and event store for Postgres

» Message DB's profile | » Message DB's website

#45: Tandem HQ

Visual Collaboration

A virtual office for remote teams

» Tandem HQ's profile | » Tandem HQ's website

#46: Dockup

Deployment as a Service

On demand staging environments for engineering teams

» Dockup's profile | » Dockup's website

#47: Falco

Performance Monitoring

Open-Source Web Performance Monitoring

» Falco's profile | » Falco's website

#49: Hermes

JavaScript Compilers

An open source and lightweight JavaScript engine (by Facebook)

» Hermes's profile | » Hermes's website

#50: FeaturePeek

Deployment as a Service

Supercharged deployment previews for all.

» FeaturePeek's profile | » FeaturePeek's website

Analytics Tool of the Year (2019)


#2: Mixpanel

General Analytics

Powerful, self-serve product analytics to help you convert, engage, and retain more users

» Follow Mixpanel | » See recent tech decisions about Mixpanel

#3: Optimizely

A/B Testing Analytics

Experimentation platform for marketing, product, and engineering teams, with feature flags and personalization

» Follow Optimizely | » See recent tech decisions about Optimizely

#4: Segment

Analytics Integrator

A single hub to collect, translate and send your data with the flip of a switch.

» Follow Segment | » See recent tech decisions about Segment

#5: Piwik

General Analytics

The ultimate open source alternative to Google Analytics

» Follow Piwik | » See recent tech decisions about Piwik

Application Hosting Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: Amazon EC2

Cloud Hosting

Scalable, pay-as-you-go compute capacity in the cloud

» Follow Amazon EC2 | » See recent tech decisions about Amazon EC2

#2: Firebase

Realtime Backend / API

The Realtime App Platform

» Follow Firebase | » See recent tech decisions about Firebase

#3: Heroku

Platform as a Service

Build, deliver, monitor and scale web apps and APIs with a trail blazing developer experience.

» Follow Heroku | » See recent tech decisions about Heroku

#4: AWS Lambda

Serverless / Task Processing

Automatically run code in response to modifications to objects in Amazon S3 buckets, messages in Kinesis streams, or updates in DynamoDB

» Follow AWS Lambda | » See recent tech decisions about AWS Lambda

#5: DigitalOcean

Cloud Hosting

Deploy an SSD cloud server in less than 55 seconds with a dedicated IP and root access.

» Follow DigitalOcean | » See recent tech decisions about DigitalOcean

Web Server of the Year (2019)


#1: NGINX

Web Servers

A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.

» Follow NGINX | » See recent tech decisions about NGINX

#2: Apache HTTP Server

Web Servers

Open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows

» Follow Apache HTTP Server | » See recent tech decisions about Apache HTTP Server

#3: Apache Tomcat

Web Servers

An open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies

» Follow Apache Tomcat | » See recent tech decisions about Apache Tomcat

#5: Gunicorn

Web Servers

A Python WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX

» Follow Gunicorn | » See recent tech decisions about Gunicorn

Application Utility of the Year (2019)


#1: Postman

API Tools

Only complete API development environment

» Follow Postman | » See recent tech decisions about Postman

#2: Elasticsearch

Search as a Service

Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine

» Follow Elasticsearch | » See recent tech decisions about Elasticsearch

#3: Google Maps

Mapping APIs

Build highly customisable maps with your own content and imagery

» Follow Google Maps | » See recent tech decisions about Google Maps

#4: GitHub Pages

Static Web Hosting

Public webpages freely hosted and easily published.

» Follow GitHub Pages | » See recent tech decisions about GitHub Pages

#5: Amazon Route 53

DNS Management

A highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service.

» Follow Amazon Route 53 | » See recent tech decisions about Amazon Route 53

Assets & Media Tool of the Year (2019)


#2: Dropbox

File Storage

Build the power of Dropbox into your apps

» Follow Dropbox | » See recent tech decisions about Dropbox

#3: CloudFlare

Content Delivery Network

The Web Performance & Security Company.

» Follow CloudFlare | » See recent tech decisions about CloudFlare

#4: Amazon CloudFront

Content Delivery Network

Content delivery with low latency and high data transfer speeds

» Follow Amazon CloudFront | » See recent tech decisions about Amazon CloudFront

#5: OpenCV

Image Processing and Management

Open Source Computer Vision Library

» Follow OpenCV | » See recent tech decisions about OpenCV

Back Office Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: Gmail

Email Services

A free web-based e-mail service

» Follow Gmail | » See recent tech decisions about Gmail

#2: Google Sheets

Spreadsheets Online

Create and edit spreadsheets online, for free

» Follow Google Sheets | » See recent tech decisions about Google Sheets

#3: Microsoft Excel

Spreadsheets Online

A spreadsheet program included in the Microsoft Office suite of applications

» Follow Microsoft Excel | » See recent tech decisions about Microsoft Excel

#4: ProtonMail

Email Services

Secure email with no compromises

» ProtonMail's profile | » ProtonMail's website

#5: Zenefits

Payroll & Benefits

The #1 All-In-One HR Platform

» Zenefits's profile | » Zenefits's website

Build, Test, & Deploy Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: GitHub

Code Collaboration & Version Control

Powerful collaboration, review, and code management for open source and private development projects

» Follow GitHub | » See recent tech decisions about GitHub

#2: Docker

Virtual Machine Platforms & Containers

Enterprise Container Platform for High-Velocity Innovation.

» Follow Docker | » See recent tech decisions about Docker

#3: Visual Studio Code

Text Editor

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

» Follow Visual Studio Code | » See recent tech decisions about Visual Studio Code

#4: npm

Front End Package Manager

The package manager for JavaScript.

» Follow npm | » See recent tech decisions about npm

#5: Jenkins

Continuous Integration

An extendable open source continuous integration server

» Follow Jenkins | » See recent tech decisions about Jenkins

Collaboration Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: Slack

Group Chat & Notifications

Bring all your communication together in one place

» Follow Slack | » See recent tech decisions about Slack

#2: Jira

Issue Tracking

The #1 software development tool used by agile teams to plan, track, and release great software.

» Follow Jira | » See recent tech decisions about Jira

#3: Trello

Project Management

Your entire project, in a single glance

» Follow Trello | » See recent tech decisions about Trello

#4: G Suite

Productivity Suite

Collaboration and productivity apps for Business

» Follow G Suite | » See recent tech decisions about G Suite

#5: Confluence

Project Management

One place to share, find, and collaborate on information

» Follow Confluence | » See recent tech decisions about Confluence

Communications Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: Twilio

Voice and SMS

Bring voice and messaging to your web and mobile applications.

» Follow Twilio | » See recent tech decisions about Twilio

#3: Amazon SES

Transactional Email

Bulk and transactional email-sending service.

» Follow Amazon SES | » See recent tech decisions about Amazon SES

#4: Mailgun

Transactional Email

The Email Service for Developers.

» Follow Mailgun | » See recent tech decisions about Mailgun

#5: Mandrill

Transactional Email

Send transactional, triggered, and personalized email, then track results.

» Follow Mandrill | » See recent tech decisions about Mandrill

Data Store/Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: MySQL

Databases

The world's most popular open source database

» Follow MySQL | » See recent tech decisions about MySQL

#3: PostgreSQL

Databases

A powerful, open source object-relational database system

» Follow PostgreSQL | » See recent tech decisions about PostgreSQL

#4: Redis

In-Memory Databases

Open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store

» Follow Redis | » See recent tech decisions about Redis

#5: Amazon S3

Cloud Storage

Store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web

» Follow Amazon S3 | » See recent tech decisions about Amazon S3

Design Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: InVision

Interactive Mockups

Prototyping & Collaboration For Design Teams

» Follow InVision | » See recent tech decisions about InVision

#2: Figma

Graphic Design

The collaborative interface design tool.

» Follow Figma | » See recent tech decisions about Figma

#3: Adobe Photoshop

Graphic Design

The industry standard in design, photography, video editing & more

» Follow Adobe Photoshop | » See recent tech decisions about Adobe Photoshop

#4: Sketch

Graphic Design

Professional Digital Design for Mac

» Follow Sketch | » See recent tech decisions about Sketch

#5: Adobe Illustrator

Graphic Design

Create logos, icons, sketches, typography and complex illustrations

» Follow Adobe Illustrator | » See recent tech decisions about Adobe Illustrator

Language of the Year (2019)


#1: JavaScript

Languages

Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

» Follow JavaScript | » See recent tech decisions about JavaScript

#2: Python

Languages

A clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

» Follow Python | » See recent tech decisions about Python

#3: Node.js

Frameworks (Full Stack)

A platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications

» Follow Node.js | » See recent tech decisions about Node.js

#4: Java

Languages

A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible

» Follow Java | » See recent tech decisions about Java

#5: HTML5

Languages

5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web

» Follow HTML5 | » See recent tech decisions about HTML5

Front-end Framework of the Year (2019)


#1: React

Javascript UI Libraries

A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

» Follow React | » See recent tech decisions about React

#2: jQuery

Javascript UI Libraries

The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

» Follow jQuery | » See recent tech decisions about jQuery

#3: AngularJS

Javascript MVC Frameworks

Superheroic JavaScript MVW Framework

» Follow AngularJS | » See recent tech decisions about AngularJS

#4: Vue.js

Javascript MVC Frameworks

A progressive framework for building user interfaces

» Follow Vue.js | » See recent tech decisions about Vue.js

#5: Redux

State Management Library

Predictable state container for JavaScript apps

» Follow Redux | » See recent tech decisions about Redux

Backend/Full Stack Framework of the Year (2019)


#1: Django

Frameworks (Full Stack)

The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines

» Follow Django | » See recent tech decisions about Django

#2: Laravel

Frameworks (Full Stack)

A PHP Framework For Web Artisans

» Follow Laravel | » See recent tech decisions about Laravel

#3: ExpressJS

Microframeworks (Backend)

Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple

» Follow ExpressJS | » See recent tech decisions about ExpressJS

#4: Spring Boot

Frameworks (Full Stack)

Create Spring-powered, production-grade applications and services with absolute minimum fuss

» Follow Spring Boot | » See recent tech decisions about Spring Boot

#5: Flask

Microframeworks (Backend)

A microframework for Python based on Werkzeug, Jinja 2 and good intentions

» Follow Flask | » See recent tech decisions about Flask

Mobile Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: React Native

Cross-Platform Mobile Development

A framework for building native apps with React

» Follow React Native | » See recent tech decisions about React Native

#2: Android SDK

Frameworks (Full Stack)

An SDK that provides you the API libraries and developer tools necessary to build, test, and debug apps for Android.

» Follow Android SDK | » See recent tech decisions about Android SDK

#3: Ionic

Cross-Platform Mobile Development

A beautiful front-end framework for developing cross-platform apps with web technologies like Angular and React.

» Follow Ionic | » See recent tech decisions about Ionic

#4: Flutter

Cross-Platform Mobile Development

Cross-platform mobile framework from Google

» Follow Flutter | » See recent tech decisions about Flutter

#5: Xamarin

Cross-Platform Mobile Development

Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#

» Follow Xamarin | » See recent tech decisions about Xamarin

Monitoring Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: Kibana

Monitoring Tools

Visualize your Elasticsearch data and navigate the Elastic Stack

» Follow Kibana | » See recent tech decisions about Kibana

#2: Sentry

Exception Monitoring

See performance issues, fix errors faster, and optimize code health.

» Follow Sentry | » See recent tech decisions about Sentry

#3: Grafana

Monitoring Tools

Open source Graphite & InfluxDB Dashboard and Graph Editor

» Follow Grafana | » See recent tech decisions about Grafana

#4: New Relic

Performance Monitoring

New Relic is the industry’s largest and most comprehensive cloud-based observability platform.

» Follow New Relic | » See recent tech decisions about New Relic

#5: Amazon CloudWatch

Cloud Monitoring

Monitor AWS resources and custom metrics generated by your applications and services

» Follow Amazon CloudWatch | » See recent tech decisions about Amazon CloudWatch

Payments Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: Stripe

Payment Services

Payments for developers

» Follow Stripe | » See recent tech decisions about Stripe

#2: PayPal

Payment Services

Send Money, Pay Online or Set Up a Merchant Account

» Follow PayPal | » See recent tech decisions about PayPal

#3: Braintree

Payment Services

Accept payments in your app or website today

» Follow Braintree | » See recent tech decisions about Braintree

#4: Coinbase

Bitcoin Services

Integrate bitcoin payments into your website or application

» Coinbase's profile | » Coinbase's website

#5: Stripe Billing

Billing and Subscriptions

A set of tools for billing and subscriptions

» Stripe Billing's profile | » Stripe Billing's website

Support, Sales, and Marketing Tool of the Year (2019)


#1: WordPress

Self-Hosted Blogging / CMS

A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

» Follow WordPress | » See recent tech decisions about WordPress

#3: HubSpot

Marketing Automation

All the software you need to do inbound marketing.

» Follow HubSpot | » See recent tech decisions about HubSpot

#4: Zendesk

Help Desk

The leading cloud-based customer service software solution.

» Follow Zendesk | » See recent tech decisions about Zendesk

Top Stack Stories (2019)


Gather around the 🔥, it's story time! 2019 was another year full of heroic tales of scaling from nothing to billions of calls and flags. This year's top spot went to our friends over at LaunchDarkly. Not bad timing either- LaunchDarkly recently announced a new $54M round of financing to grow their feature flags platform. Similar to last year's top story from Stream, large tech companies like Facebook (Instagram), Twitter, and LinkedIn build their own feature flag management systems. But startups (like us) don't have time for that. Check out all the companies using LaunchDarkly. The other top stories came from some more awesome developer tool makers, including: Sqreen , Segment , CircleCI and RayGun .

Top Community Members (2019)


These rankings are brought to you, by YOU. The StackShare community makes all of this possible by sharing not only your stacks, but your reasoning behind why you chose your stack. For this year's awards we wanted to recognize the community members that have gone above and beyond the call of duty to share best practices with other developers. The community members that have, in aggregate, taken hours to detail the important stack decisions they've made. While there's far more than 10 developers that contributed in a major way to StackShare- these ten are quite special. Thank you to everyone who took the time to help hundreds of thousands of developers decide on the right tools! Click each community member's link below to see all the Decisions they shared in 2019!

Methodology:

For tool rankings, scores are calculated using a combination of # of stacks a tool was added to, number of votes for one-liners contributed by the community, # of follows, and pageviews for the year. New Tool rankings were chosen from tools that were created and added to StackShare in 2019 with follows weighing more than other metrics since new tools don’t just enter stacks overnight.

As usual, we removed Git from the rankings in the DevOps rankings since many developers don't list in their stack (and instead only list git collaboration services like GitHub).

If you have any questions about the rankings, drop us a line at team@stackshare.io!