Developer Tools
This category covers the full developer toolkit — not just AI-powered coding assistants (those are in the AI Code Tools category), but everything you need to build, ship, and maintain software.
Editors & IDEs : VS Code is still the default. Cursor and Windsurf add AI-native capabilities on top. JetBrains IDEs (WebStorm, IntelliJ) remain popular for JVM and typed language ecosystems. Zed is the new performance-focused alternative.
Hosting & deployment : Vercel for Next.js and frontend apps. Railway and Render for backend services. Fly.io for edge deployment. Coolify and Dokku for self-hosted alternatives. The trend is toward platforms that handle infrastructure so you can focus on code.
Databases : Supabase (Postgres + auth + storage in one), PlanetScale (serverless MySQL), Neon (serverless Postgres), and Turso (edge SQLite). For simpler needs, SQLite with Litestream backup is underrated.
APIs & integrations : Postman and Hoppscotch for API testing. Stripe for payments. Resend and Plunk for transactional email. Auth.js, Clerk, and Lucia for authentication.
Monitoring & observability : Sentry for error tracking, PostHog for product analytics, Better Stack for uptime monitoring. These aren't glamorous but they're the difference between finding bugs in production and your users finding them for you.
CI/CD & DevOps : GitHub Actions covers most teams. For larger setups, GitLab CI and CircleCI offer more configuration options. Docker and Kubernetes for containerized deployments, though most small teams don't need K8s.
The indie developer stack
If you're a solo developer or small team shipping a SaaS: Next.js + Supabase + Vercel + Stripe + Resend covers 90% of what you need. Start here and add complexity only when the product demands it.
Browse the developer tools below.
