What's your default stack for a new side project in late 2026?

Angel Reyes · 13 likes

Next.js still for me. I know it's not cool to say, but I'm fast in it

Maya Putri · 9 likes

nothing wrong with that, ship ship ship

Curious Panda · 2 likes

being fast in a tool beats everything else for side projects

Mango Otter · 8 likes

boring answer: postgres, a server rendered framework, one cheap VPS. ships every time

Nicolás Díaz · 8 likes

boring is underrated, the fun is supposed to be in the project not the plumbing

Aarav Sharma · 4 likes

one VPS gang. no surprise bills

Tiny Runner · 5 likes

Go backend, plain templates, sqlite. single binary deploy is just so nice

Amina Okafor · 0 likes

the single binary thing is so good, scp and you're live

Lucas Silva · 5 likes

rails is still the fastest way I know to go from idea to working CRUD app

Milan Visser · 2 likes

rails 8 era has been really good tbh

Aarav Sharma · 0 likes

rails never left, people just stopped talking about it

Urban Otter · 4 likes

For hosting I'm on a free tier PaaS until something gets traction, then I'll worry about it

Isha Menon · 9 likes

just watch out for free tiers disappearing, happened to me twice

Quiet Noodle · 0 likes

set a billing alert, learned that the hard way

Arif Hasan · 2 likes

I stopped using a separate SPA + API setup for side projects. too much glue for one person

Ren Suzuki · 6 likes

same, htmx or server components cut out so much work

Liam Naidoo · 6 likes

the api layer was half my code for no reason

Hamza Malik · 0 likes

SQLite for everything until it obviously isn't enough. it's almost always enough

Aisha Jacobs · 8 likes

sqlite on a single box has carried more side projects than any cloud db

Ethan Brooks · 3 likes

litestream for backups and you're basically done

Grace Parker · 0 likes

my default stack is whatever framework I haven't tried yet, which is why I never finish anything

Ananya Rao · 7 likes

this is the realest answer in the thread

Noura Alotaibi · 0 likes

the project is learning, the shipping is optional

Midnight Atlas · 0 likes

whatever stack, I've stopped writing my own auth. life is too short

Sara Hosseini · 0 likes

rolling your own auth for a weekend project is how weekends become months