Free, verified, CC-BY-4.0
The open alternatives dataset
Every verified open-source and self-hostable alternative we track, with the licence read from the project’s own repository rather than its marketing page. 377 entries across 77 categories and 83 proprietary products. Free to download, free to use commercially, and free to check our work against.
- Alternatives
- 377
- Open source
- 285
- Self-hostable
- 301
- Categories
- 77
- Products covered
- 83
What is in it
| field | what it holds |
|---|---|
| alternative | Name and slug of the open or self-hostable option |
| replaces | The proprietary product it substitutes for, and its vendor |
| category / stack_layer | Category, plus which of the five stack layers it sits at |
| license | SPDX-style label read from the project's own LICENSE file |
| open_source | True only for genuinely open licences — qualified ones are false |
| self_hostable / local_first | Whether you can run it, and whether it works offline |
| sovereignty_score | 0–100 control measure; weighting published in the methodology |
| pricing | Pricing shape in plain words, as stated by the project |
| website / repo / docs | Canonical links |
| last_verified | The date that row was last checked |
Coverage by stack layer
- L1Energy0 products · 0 alternatives
- L2Chips & silicon0 products · 0 alternatives
- L3Infrastructure28 products · 129 alternatives
- L4Models & tooling14 products · 70 alternatives
- L5Applications41 products · 178 alternatives
Using it — attribution
Licensed CC-BY-4.0. Commercial use, redistribution and modification are all permitted. The one condition is credit with a link. Copy whichever form fits:
Plain text
Macrostack (2026). Macrostack Open Alternatives Dataset (version 2026-08-18). CC-BY-4.0. https://www.macrostack.net/data
HTML
<a href="https://www.macrostack.net">Data from Macrostack</a> — CC-BY-4.0
BibTeX
@misc{macrostack2026,
title = {Macrostack Open Alternatives Dataset},
author = {Macrostack},
year = {2026},
note = {Version 2026-08-18. CC-BY-4.0},
url = {https://www.macrostack.net/data}
}Common questions
- Can I use this dataset commercially?
- Yes. It is published under CC-BY-4.0, which permits commercial use, redistribution and modification. The single condition is attribution: credit Macrostack and include a link to macrostack.net wherever you use it. That applies whether you are publishing an article, building a product, or training a model on it.
- How are the licences verified?
- By reading the project's own LICENSE file or repository metadata, not the marketing page. This matters more than it sounds: several widely-described 'open source' projects ship under licences that are not open source at all — Apache-2.0 with additional conditions, community licences with usage thresholds, or GPL with a commercial revenue clause. Those are recorded as what they are, and flagged as not open source, because the distinction is the entire point.
- How often is it updated?
- It regenerates on every deploy from the same catalog the site itself renders from, so the download can never drift from what the pages say. Each row carries its own last_verified date, so you can filter to entries checked within any window you consider acceptable.
- What is the Sovereignty Score?
- A transparent 0-100 measure of how much control an option gives you: licence openness, whether it can be self-hosted, whether it works without a network, and how portable your data is. The full weighting is published on the methodology page. It is editorial, it is consistent, and it is never influenced by whether an entry has an affiliate programme.
- Why publish this for free?
- Because a catalog that nobody can check is a claim rather than a resource. Publishing it in full lets anyone verify our rankings against the underlying facts, which is the only way an independent comparison site earns trust. It also means researchers and journalists can cite the data directly rather than paraphrasing a page.