I got tired of “top starred” open-source lists, so I built PickOpenSource

I use open source software all the time, but it’s a constant struggle to find the right project.

My usual process goes something like:

1. Search ‘open source alternative to X’
2. Check round up posts
3. Inspect GitHub stars
4. Pick one
5. Discover later that the license is weird, or that it’s a pain to self-host or that it’s abandoned

This happened to me over and over again.

I realized the problem was a simple misassumption:

GitHub stars don’t always reflect what I actually need in a project.

So I built PickOpenSource.

What I wanted in an open source directory

When evaluating projects, I usually have decision points around:

• What problem does this solve?
• What is the license?
• Can it be self-hosted?
• Is there a managed version?
• Is the repository maintained?

Usually these things are more important to me than the number of stars, so that’s what PickOpenSource focuses on.

Browse by the job you need to get done

The site is organized around categories like:

• Analytics
• Authentication
• CMS
• CRM
• Databases
• Developer tools
• Customer support
• DevOps

You pick a category, then compare projects within that category.

The idea is that you start from the job that needs to get done, rather than the existing projects.

The things that I care about

In general I want to highlight the things that are deal-breakers or that slow down adoption:

License

MIT, Apache, AGPL, and custom licenses can all be deal-breakers, depending on what you’re building.

I’m not a lawyer, but I think this information should be easy to find for any given project.

Hosting

This is a tricky one - I think people sometimes use the term ‘open source’ to mean ‘can I self-host this?’.

Other times it’s a managed product that just has an open source repository.

Both are totally valid, but I want to highlight that difference.

Repository activity

A high number of stars doesn’t mean much if the project isn’t actively maintained.

The site tries to pull this information in as well, using GitHub’s API (as of roughly every 24 hours).

Alternatives pages

I’ve also got pages for specific queries like:

open-source Google Analytics alternatives

or similar products to other SaaS companies. These tend to be more helpful than general ‘best open source tools’ roundups, in my opinion.

Compare pages

If you narrow your options down to two, you can compare them - for example:

Umami vs Plausible

I think it’s helpful to be able to see the differences between two similar projects in one place.

What we’ve got so far

The site has:

• 200+ curated projects
• Category pages
• Alternatives pages
• Compare pages
• Repository activity
• A small newsletter for new items
• Sponsored placement slots

I think it’s still pretty early, and I’d rather spend time curating and improving information about the projects we’ve got rather than importing thousands of repositories just to have a bigger list.

How sponsorship works

The site has sponsorship slots, but I want to make sure that there’s a clear distinction between projects that pay to be listed, and projects that get there through curation.

Sponsored projects are called out as such, and don’t affect the general discovery experience.

This is important to me, because I feel like that’s the whole point of a tool like this - to make it easy to make better technical decisions. If somebody pays for a sponsored slot, that should be clear.

What I want to improve

I think the biggest area of improvement right now is decision guidance.

For example, rather than having:

Tool A vs Tool B

I’d rather have something like:

Pick this one if you want the easiest self-hosted setup

or

Pick the other one if you want managed hosting and don’t care about customization.

I’m interested in reducing generic comparison copy and adding more of those specific, actionable decision points.

Feedback

If you’re interested in using the site, I’d love to hear:

1. What categories would you like to see?
2. What information are you looking for when considering open source tools?
3. Did I get any of the license info wrong? Any hosting info?
4. What SaaS alternatives pages would you like to see?

I think concrete criticism is more valuable than vague praise at this point.

Try the site

https://pickopensource.site

If you maintain an open source project that should be listed, you can submit it here as well.

I built this thing because I needed it, and I’m happy to say that I’ve already avoided switching to a tool that was probably the right choice but with a terrible, difficult-to-maintain open source implementation.

If this helps somebody else avoid doing the same, that’s a win in my book.