// comparisons
Open source, compared honestly
Head-to-head comparisons of open source tools, with the honest downside of each one — not just what the project pages say.
- The Best Self-Hosted Analytics ToolsEight tools, eight database stacks, eight different paywalls. Here's which trade-off actually fits how you want to run your own infrastructure.
- The Best Open Source API Gateways, ComparedKong has the plugins, Envoy is a building block, and one of these eight is officially dead. Here's which gateway actually fits your setup, and which to skip.
- The Best Open Source End-to-End Testing FrameworksPlaywright is the safest default, but Cypress debugs better and Selenium still wins for polyglot teams. Six picks, each with a real reason to skip it.
- The Best Open Source RAG FrameworksEight frameworks for retrieval over your own documents, with the weakness every other list leaves off. Popular isn't always the right fit.
- The Best Tools for Running LLMs LocallySeven local inference tools, and the tradeoff hiding behind each one. Ollama is the easy default — that doesn't make it the right answer for every setup.
- The Best Open Source AI Agent FrameworksEight agent frameworks, and none of them really compete with each other. Pick by how much control you want to keep, not by which has the most stars.
- The Best Open Source Vector DatabasesEight vector databases, judged by where each one actually breaks. No system here is the right answer for every scale.