As a backend developer, I've seen and used countless tools. But some truly stand out in making our lives easier.
So, I made a list of 13 open-source tools to help supercharge your web development journey in 2025.
1. Composio: The Integration platform for AI agents
AI is eating the software; in 2025, a large part of web development will also include AI capabilities. However, given their complex OAuth flows, integrating applications like GitHub, Slack, and Gmail into AI agents can be challenging.
Composio solves this. It lets you integrate over 250+ applications from various categories like Calendly, Jira, and Drive to make complicated automation.
Here's a small example of using an agent to star a repo on GitHub using Composio.
Getting started with it is very easy.
npm install composio-core openai
Connect your GitHub Account
import { Composio } from "composio-core";
const client = new Composio({ apiKey: "<your-api-key>" });
const entity = await client.getEntity("Jessica");
const connection = await entity.initiateConnection({appName: 'github'});
console.log(`Open this URL to authenticate: ${connection.redirectUrl}`);
Initialize Composio and OpenAI
import { OpenAI } from "openai";
import { OpenAIToolSet } from "composio-core";
const openai_client = new OpenAI();
const composio_toolset = new OpenAIToolSet();
Fetch GitHub actions and pass them to the LLM
const tools = await composio_toolset.getTools({
actions: ["github_star_a_repository_for_the_authenticated_user"]
});
const instruction = "Star the repo composiohq/composio on GitHub";
const response = await openai_client.chat.completions.create({
model: "gpt-4o",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: instruction }],
tools: tools,
tool_choice: "auto",
});
Execute the tool calls.
const result = await composio_toolset.handleToolCall(response);
console.log(result);
TheΒ documentationΒ provides more on Composio, its work, and important concepts for making capable production-ready agents.
Star the Composio repository β
2. Hono: An Ultrafast, Versatile Framework for Edge Computing
Hono is a lightweight and exceptionally fast web framework that runs on various JavaScript runtimes. This makes it suitable for use with Deno and particularly well-suited for edge computing environments like Cloudflare Workers.
Here's a simple Hono application:
import { Hono } from 'hono';
const app = new Hono();
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello Hono!'));
export default app;
Hono's minimal size and speed make it a strong contender for building APIs and applications in resource-constrained environments.
3. Val Town: An Innovative Social Platform for Sharing and Running Code
Val Town offers a unique social coding environment where developers can write, share, and execute small TypeScript or JavaScript code snippets. These snippets can be run as serverless functions or scheduled tasks (cron jobs), fostering a community-driven approach to code execution.
Here's an example of a simple function in Val Town:
export async function hello(name: string) {
return `Hello, ${name}!`;
}
Val Town provides an intriguing way to experiment with code, collaborate with others, and deploy small utilities without complex infrastructure.
4. Nx: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Monorepo Development
Nx is a powerful build system that provides a comprehensive set of tools for managing monoreposβlarge projects containing multiple applications and libraries that share code.
Setting up a new Nx workspace is straightforward:
npx create-nx-workspace my-monorepo
Nx enhances developer productivity with features like code generation, dependency visualization, and intelligent task execution, making it an essential asset for large, complex projects.
5. Mithril.js: Featherweight MVC Framework
An ultra-lightweight client-side MVC framework. It's tiny (around 10kb gzipped), fast, and provides routing and XHR utilities out of the box.
Mithril.js is an excellent choice when performance and bundle size are top priorities. It provides a minimalistic yet powerful set of tools for building single-page applications.
# Installation
npm install mithril
A small example
// Example component
var MyComponent = {
view: function() {
return m("main", [
m("h1", {class: "title"}, "My App"),
])
}
}
Mithril.js boasts a small API surface area, making it easy to learn and master.
6. Preact: React's Lightweight Cousin
A fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API. It's a great choice when bundle size and performance are critical.
Preact offers a familiar development experience for React developers while delivering significant performance gains. It's highly compatible with the React ecosystem.
# Installation
npm install preact
// Example component
import { h, Component } from 'preact';
class MyComponent extends Component {
render() {
return <h1>Hello, {this.props.name}!</h1>;
}
}
Preact's small size and efficient rendering make it ideal for mobile web applications and performance-sensitive projects.
7. SurrealDB: The Future of Databases?
A scalable, distributed, collaborative document-graph database for the real-time web. It can be used in the browser or on the server.
SurrealDB is a new, innovative database that supports SQL queries with a flexible data model.
# Installation (Docker example)
docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 surrealdb/surrealdb start
Query SurrealDB with SQL, GraphQL, or directly manipulate records.
8. Coolify: Self-Hosted Heroku/Netlify Alternative
An open-source & self-hostable Heroku / Netlify alternative. Coolify simplifies application and database deployment to your own servers, giving you more control and flexibility.
# Installation
curl -fsSL https://get.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh)
Coolify supports various deployment options, including Docker and local environments.
9. Actix Web: Rust-Powered Performance
A powerful, pragmatic, and extremely fast web framework for Rust.
Actix Web leverages Rust's type system and ownership model to ensure both performance and memory safety.
# Installation (add to Cargo.toml)
[dependencies]
actix-web = "4"
// Example Actix Web app
use actix_web::{get, web, App, HttpServer, Responder};
#[get("/hello/{name}")]
async fn greet(name: web::Path<String>) -> impl Responder {
format!("Hello {name}!")
}
#[actix_web::main]
async fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
HttpServer::new(|| {
App::new().service(greet)
})
.bind(("127.0.0.1", 8080))?
.run()
.await
}
Actix Web is ideal for performance-critical applications where reliability is paramount.
10. Bun: Blazing-Fast JavaScript Runtime
An incredibly fast all-in-one JavaScript runtime. Designed as a drop-in replacement for Node.js, it can run most Node.js code significantly faster.
Bun is a fast, all-in-one toolkit for running, building, testing, and debugging JavaScript and TypeScript, from a single file to a full-stack application.
# Installation
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
// server.js
export default {
port: 3000,
fetch(request) {
return new Response("Welcome to Bun!");
},
};
// run
bun run server.js
Bun's performance is its key advantage, offering significant speed improvements over traditional Node.js.
11. Portainer: Docker Management Made Easy
A lightweight, cross-platform, and open-source management UI for Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes, and ACI. Makes it easy to manage containers visually. Portainer provides a user-friendly interface for managing containers, images, networks, and volumes.
# Installation (Docker example)
docker run -d -p 9000:9000 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock portainer/portainer-ce
Portainer simplifies container management for both novice and experienced Docker users.
12. Remix: Full-Stack Web, Seamlessly Integrated
A full-stack web framework that lets you focus on the user interface and work back through web standards to deliver a fast, slick, and resilient user experience.
Remix enhances the developer experience with things like nested routing, data loading, and mutations all built-in.
# Installation
npx create-remix@latest
Remix deeply integrates with HTTP and the web platform, giving it unique capabilities. Here is a small example that creates a basic page.
// app/routes/index.jsx
export default function Index() {
return (
<div>
<h1>Welcome to Remix!</h1>
<p>
This is a basic page rendered by Remix.
</p>
</div>
);
}
13. DiceDB: A new approach to in-memory database
Dice DB brings a fresh take on modern data storage with its βroll-basedβ partitioning for automated sharding and near-instant scalability. Itβs lightweight and robust enough for serverless and edge deployments for high-volume workloads.
Setting up the DiceDB server
The easiest way to get started with DiceDB is using Docker by running the following command.
docker run -p 7379:7379 dicedb/dicedb --enable-watch
The above command will start the DiceDB server running locally on the port 7379 and you can connect to it using DiceDB CLI and SDKs.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/dicedb/dice
cd dice
make build
The above command will create a binary Dicedb. Execute the binary, and that will start the DiceDB server.
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Thanks for reading.
Top comments (4)
I would like to suggest a paradigm-shift by using the full stack but ten completely data-driven, like with TSQL.APP
Never heard of DiceDB, nice list.
Great list
I would add Zod here, really good piece of software.