How the ranking works
Every project gets a score out of 100 from public signals with published weights. The score sets the order; the review explains the project.
Signals and weights
A signal we cannot measure yet is left out and its weight goes to the others, so no project loses points for something we have not checked.
| Signal | Weight | What it looks at | Shown as | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adoption | 15% | GitHub stars, log-scaled, ranked half within the category and half across the list | widely used, popular, known, niche | Live |
| Momentum | 15% | stars gained in the last 30 days, ranked within the category | surging, rising, steady, flat | Coming |
| Freshness | 15% | last commit (full marks under 90 days, zero at a year) and last release | active, recent, slowing, quiet | Live |
| Maintenance | 10% | issues closed vs opened, release cadence, commits in 90 days | healthy, fair, patchy, weak | Live |
| Easy to run | 20% | apps and tools: a way to install it (Docker, pip, npm, binary, script, Helm or a release download); starters: GitHub template; both: one-click deploy, arm64, healthcheck. Not scored for libraries, plugins, models and collections | very easy, easy, some setup, hard | Live |
| Verified build | 10% | we start it in CI and wait for a healthy response | passes, untested, fails | Coming |
| Docs | 5% | install section, environment docs, upgrade notes | thorough, good, thin, missing | Coming |
| Agent-ready | 5% | CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, skills, llms.txt | ready, partly, minimal, none | Live |
| Privacy | 5% | no telemetry or opt-out, works fully offline | private, mostly private, some telemetry, leaky | Coming |
Penalties: no license −10, data must leave your host −10, star-growth anomaly −15, unpatched security advisory −20. Archived projects are removed. The weights are our judgment, not science.
Where the data comes from
- Projects are found in curated lists, app stores and template galleries, then fact-checked on GitHub: stars, last commit, license, Docker files.
- Each review is written from the project's own README and never copied from other lists: what it does, what it needs, and strengths and weaknesses you can check.
- Reviews are rewritten when the README or the latest release changes. Projects with no commits for 12 months are marked stale, and archived ones drop off.
- A project's own claim, such as "an alternative to Cursor" in its README, is labelled as its claim.
Independence
Nobody can pay for a place. Sponsors, affiliate links and tips, if any, are labelled and never touch the order. Archestack sells none of the tools it lists.
Corrections and opt-outs
Every list has forms on GitHub to add a project, fix a wrong fact or opt out (handled within 24 hours): open the forms (opens in a new tab). The full data is public under CC BY 4.0 at data.json and in each list's repository.
Method changes
- 2026-10-09: Docker alone earns no points, medals mark places 1–3 instead of score bands
Rankings: Best of Vibe Coding and Best of Open-Source AI.