Switched to Insomnia last year. Never going back. Insomnia: Cleaner UI, GraphQL first, $8/mo (way cheaper than Postman), Open source option. Hoppscotch: Free + open source, Lightweight, Web-based. My pick: Insomnia for serious work. Hoppscotch for quick tests.

DevOps guy here. Deploy on all three regularly. Railway: Easiest DX, Great for prototypes, Pricing can get high. Render: Most stable, Good free tier, Slower deployments. Fly.io: Best for global latency, Complex but powerful, Great for edge computing. My recommendation: Start with Railway. Scale to Fly.io when you need global.

Running benchmarks on all three for our dev team. ChatGPT Plus: Best code generation (o1 model is insane), Best integrations, Great for quick fixes. Claude Pro: Better for big refactors, Longer context = less context switching, Slightly better at thinking. Gemini Ultra: Great if you’re in Google ecosystem, Fast responses, Still catching up on coding. Our pick: ChatGPT for coding. Claude for writing.

Dev here. Cursor is best overall, but pricey. Windsurf is good free alternative. If you’re serious about coding, just get Cursor. The time you save is worth it.

Dev here. Here’s my take:

Cursor: Best overall, but pricey

Windsurf: Good free alternative

CoDev: Haven’t tried yet

If you’re serious about coding, just get Cursor. The time you save is worth it.

quick guide:

• PostgreSQL – when in doubt, pick this. versatile, powerful.
• MySQL – legacy apps, or when team only knows MySQL.
• SQLite – side projects, small apps, edge cases.

for 2026, PostgreSQL is the safe default. everything else is niche.

senior dev here. used all three in production.

• Next.js – still the standard. biggest ecosystem, most jobs.
• Nuxt – great if you love Vue. solid, but smaller community.
• SvelteKit – fastest, simplest. community growing fast.

my pick for SaaS: Next.js. the ecosystem is unmatched. when you need a library, it exists for Next.js.

sold $10k+ on all three platforms:

• Gumroad – simple, takes a cut (10%). indie darling.
• Lemon Squeezy – handles global taxes, 5% + $50c. good for EU.
• Stripe – 1.5% + 25c. cheapest, but setup is painful.

for indie hackers:

• US only → Stripe (cheapest)
• Global → Lemon Squeezy (taxes handled)
• Quick → Gumroad (easiest)

used all three. here’s the deal:

• Bolt – newest, pretty UI, but limited compared to others
• Lovable – solid for fast prototypes, good integrations
• Cursor – not really an app builder, more like AI-enhanced IDE

for actual SaaS: Lovable is your best bet. you can ship real products.

Bolt is still early. Cursor is for devs who want AI help writing code.