👓 Awesome Electron.js Alternatives

A curated list of awesome Electron alternatives.

Electron is an open-source framework for creating desktop apps using web technologies as JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It combines the Chromium rendering engine and the Node.js runtime.

There are a number of good reasons to avoid Electron or consider something other than Electron:

• Large size
• Resource (RAM) hogging
• Source code protection
• We would already have a web component in the system that can be used.
• Electron apps cannot be submitted to the Apple store
• Minimal resources
• Development platform like nodecode as Kodular, lowcode as Outsystems, database as a service as Astra DB, backend as service, mobile as a service, frontend as a service as Figma, banking as a service ...
• visual programming paradigm (this includes solutions or technologies like development platform, blockly, serverless, dbdiagram and programming language as elm, python, v ...)
• It is possible to develop games with Electron-js, but for good game development it is not recommended
• create data analysis and statistics with js libraries and electron-js for dashboards, however it is also not recommended

👓 Alternatives to the Electron.js ⚛

You can click of the license badges to learn more, try it out on this one:

C#(.Net)

Project	Description	License
Avalonia	Avalonia UI creates pixel-perfect, native, create Multi-Platform Apps with .NET
Uno	Pixel-Perfect Multi-Platform Applications with C# and WinUI.	*
Chromely	Build HTML Desktop Apps on .NET/.NET Core/.NET 5 using native GUI, HTML5, JavaScript, CSS.	**
SpiderEye	Cross platform .Net Core applications with a webview UI.	**
Photino.NET	Photino uses the OSs built-in WebKit-based browser control for Windows, macOS and Linux. Photino is the lightest cross-platform framework. Compared to Electron, a Photino app is up to 110 times smaller! And it uses far less system memory too!.
foton	Prototype for an Electron alternative written in C# by Integrative Software LLC and contributors.	**

* Some features locked behind subscription

** Unmaintained

C/C++

Project	Description	License
Qt	Qt (pronounced "cute") is free and open-source cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications.	OR
wxWidgets	wxWidgets is a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. It has popular language bindings for Python, Ruby, Lua, Perl and several other languages. Uses a less restrictive version of the L-GPL allowing you to use a GPL license while still allowing you use it within proprietary software, click the badge to learn more.
sciter	Embeddable HTML/CSS/JavaScript engine for modern UI development.
Ultralight	Ultra-fast, ultra-light, standards-compliant HTML renderer for applications and games. Based on WebKit— supports most modern HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript features while still remaining light and configurable.
Webview	Tiny cross-platform webview library which uses Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and Edge on Windows 10.
Molybden	An SDK for building modern and secure cross-desktop apps with HTML/CSS/JavaScript GUI.
Saucer	🛸 Next-gen desktop apps with web-frontend in C++.
tiny	This is a tiny alternative to electron.	*
UnityHub	A native alternative to the heavy Electron Unity Hub, written in C++. UnityHubNative is a lightweight C++ / wxWidgets alternative to the unnecessarily heavy official Unity Hub, built using wxWidgets. This means that, instead of using heavy web components like the official Electron hub, it uses native GUI components on all platforms. It launches many times faster, uses far less memory and CPU, and is a fraction of the total size of the offical Unity Hub.

* Unmaintained

Crystal

Project	Description	License
Crystal Webview	Crystal language bindings for webview, a tiny cross-platform webview library which uses Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and Edge on Windows 10)

Dart

Project	Description	License
flutter	Flutter is an open source framework by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase

Delphi

Project	Description	License
FMX (FireMonkey)	The FireMonkey® framework is the app development and runtime platform behind RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder. FireMonkey is designed for teams building multi-device, true native apps for Windows, OS X, Android and iOS, and getting them to app stores and enterprises fast.

Elm

Project	Description	License
Elm UI	UI library for making web applications with Elm.	*

* Unmaintained

Go

Project	Description	License
lorca	Build cross-platform modern desktop apps in Go + HTML5.
wails	Create beautiful applications using Go.
muon	Lightweight alternative to Electron written in Golang in about ~300 LoC, using Ultralight instead of Chromium.	*
Fyne	Cross-platform GUI toolkit in Go inspired by Material Design.

* Unmaintained

Guile

Project	Description	License
guile-pstk	PS/TK version fixed to work fine on modern GNU Guile	*
guile-webview	Wrapper for using libwebview from GNU Guile

* Unmaintained

Haskell

Project	Description	License
Fudgets	Fudgets is primarily a Graphical User Interface Toolkit for Haskell and the X Windows system. Fudgets also makes it easy to create client-server applications that communicate via the Internet. It runs on Unix but not on Windows.	*
Keera Hails	Keera Hails is a library to connect values that change with one another using rules or relations. Keera Hails is back-end agnostic and not exclusive to GUIs; it has backends for Gtk+ but also hardware (wiimotes), files, sockets and FRP-driven networks (using Yampa), and experimental backends for wx, qt, HTML DOM (using GHCJS) and Android's widget toolkit. It has been used commercially in production in medium-sized applications (10K-20K locs).	*
Threepenny-gui	Threepenny-gui is a GUI framework that uses the web browser as a display. It supports Functional Reactive Programming.
webviewhs	webviewhs is a Haskell binding to the webview library created by Serge Zaitsev. This binding allows the creation of rich web-based UI experiences wrapped up in the powerful, type-safe embrace of Haskell. To render the UI it uses Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and MSHTML (IE10/11) on Windows.
Monomer	Monomer is an easy to use, cross platform, GUI library for writing native Haskell applications. It provides a framework similar to the Elm Architecture, allowing the creation of GUIs using an extensible set of widgets with pure Haskell.

* Unmaintained

Java

Project	Description	License
Swing	Swing is a GUI widget toolkit for Java.[1] It is part of Oracle's Java Foundation Classes (JFC) – an API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java programs.	*
OpenJFX or JavaFX	JavaFX is an open source, next generation client application platform for desktop, mobile and embedded systems built on Java. It is a collaborative effort by many individuals and companies with the goal of producing a modern, efficient, and fully featured toolkit for developing rich client applications.
webview	Template project for Android Studio that allows you to create an android webview application in minutes. You can use it to create a simple app for your website or as a starting point for your HTML5 based android app.	**, ***
Vaadin	Vaadin can integrate backend java (spring) with its own Hilla enviroment to connect in directly to React components - no need for api calls. Here is en example how to compile it in Electron for fully fledged desktop app: https://github.com/MarciaBM/electron-vaadin-hilla-template	****

* Unclear - Look to your java runtime/distrbution for details

** Unmaintained

*** No license provided, USE AT OWN RISK

**** Core is free, but some features are locked behind a subscription

Javascript/TypeScript

Project	Description	License
Sciter.JS	Is a 5MB HTML/CSS/JS (ES6) runtime aimed as a direct Electron replacement.
electrino	Desktop runtime for apps built on web technologies, using the system's own web browser engine.	*
nidium	A powerful rendering engine for modern mobile applications. Unlike many solution, nidium doesn't rely on webviews or native OS widgets. Instead, it uses its own high-performance rendering engine to draw custom widgets.	*
modern-hta	Run modern code in an HTML Application.
React Native Desktop	Cross-platform React Native Desktop port based on Qt framework.	*, **
NodeGui	Powered by Qt5, NodeGui-React, Vue NodeGui, Svelte-NodeGui
Astrodon	Desktop App Framework (not there yet!) for Deno, based on Tauri	*
webview_deno	🌐 Deno bindings for webview, a tiny library for creating web-based desktop GUIs
DeskGap	bundles a Node.js runtime and leaves the HTML rendering to the operating system‘s webview).	*
NW.js	Similar to electron, provides Source code protection).
Neutralinojs	chromium module is replaced with either user’s web browser or built-in browser component. Node run-time is replaced with a lightweight web server which exposes native OS functionality).
Proton Native	does the same to desktop that React Native did to mobile, based on libui-node.	*
Graffiti	HTML/CSS engine for node.js and deno.	*
Gluon	Uses normal system installed browsers (not webviews) and NodeJS, also supports Firefox.	*
Avernakis	Nodejs addon for Avernakis SDK, use TypeScript to develop modern desktop app with powerful UI kits.	*
WelsonJS	Build Windows desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS based on WSH/HTA or GTK.
Vuido	Creating native desktop applications based on Vue.js, based on libui-node	*
quasar	Vue.js based framework, which lets web developer to quickly create responsive websites/apps.
ProtonShell	Lightweight shell for websites, simple web applications, built on the Microsoft Edge system browser.	* *
Electrobun	Electrobun aims to be a complete solution-in-a-box for building, updating, and shipping ultra-fast, tiny, and cross-platform desktop applications written in Typescript. Under the hood, it uses bun to execute the main process and to bundle webview typescript, and has native bindings written in zig.

* Unmaintained

** No license provided, USE AT OWN RISK

Julia

Project	Description	License
MouseTrap	GUI Engine made for Julia

Kotlin

Project	Description	License
Compose Multiplatform	Declarative framework for sharing UIs across multiple platforms. Based on Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. Developed by JetBrains and open-source contributors.

Nim

Project	Description	License
nimx	Desktop, Mobile & Web GUI framework in Nim.
NiGui	A cross-platform, desktop GUI toolkit.
ui	Wrapper for libui. Beginnings of what might become Nim's official UI library.
iup	Wrapper for IUP. Beginnings of what might become Nim's official UI library.
SDL2	Official wrapper for SDL 2.x.
SDL2	A wrapper for SDL 2.
Owlkettle	Declarative user interface framework based on GTK.
wNim	Nim's Windows GUI Framework.
gintro	High-level GObject-Introspection based GTK3/GTK4 bindings for Nim.
nimqml	Qt QML bindings for the Nim programming language.
Neel	A library for making Electron-like HTML/JS GUI apps.
nimview	A Nim/Webview based helper to create desktop/server applications with Nim and HTML/CSS.
webgui	Web technologies based cross-platform GUI Framework with a dark theme.
fidget	Figma based UI library for Nim, with HTML and OpenGL backends.
imgui	ImGui bindings for Nim via cimgui.
nimAntTweakBar	Wrapper for AntTweakBar.	*, **
ggplotnim	A port of ggplot2 for Nim.
plotly	A plotly wrapper for Nim.
graph	A basic plotting library in Nim.
nimetry	Simple plotting in pure Nim.
nimgraphviz	A Nim library for making graphs with GraphViz and DOT.	*, **

* Unmaintained

** No license provided, USE AT OWN RISK

No-code\Low-code

Project	Description	License
Kodular	Much more than a modern app creator without coding
Bubble	Design, develop, and launch production-grade applications without code. It doesn't matter if you’re starting out or on an enterprise team — Bubble is for anyone.

Pascal/FreePascal

Project	Description	License
Lazarus	The professional Free Pascal RAD IDE. It is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Rapid Application Development.

Perl

Project	Description	License
Gtk	Gtk3 - Perl interface to the 3.x series of the gtk+ toolkit.
Prima	Prima - a perl graphic toolkit.
Perl Executing Browser	Perl Executing Browser (PEB) is an HTML user interface for Perl 5 desktop applications. It is a C++ Qt 5 application running local Perl scripts as child processes without server. Inspired by Electron and NW.js, PEB is another reuse of web technologies in desktop applications with Perl doing the heavy lifting instead of Node.js.
Tk	Perl/Tk is an extension for writing Perl programs with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on both Unix and Windows 95/NT. Tk was originally developed as an extension to the Tcl language, for use with the X Window System on Unix.
Tkx	Tkx - Yet another Tk interface.
Wx	The Wx module is a wrapper for the wxWidgets (formerly known as wxWindows) GUI toolkit.

PHP

Project	Description	License
NativePHP	NativePHP is a new framework for rapidly building rich, native desktop applications using PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript.
PHP TkUI	Build native desktop applications using PHP and Tcl/Tk.	**

** No license provided, USE AT OWN RISK

Python

Project	Description	License
fbs	Python and Qt are great for writing lightweight desktop apps. But packaging, installers, code signing and automatic updates are a pain. fbs solves these problems and saves you months of development.
PyQt	PyQt is a Python binding of the cross-platform GUI toolkit Qt, implemented as a Python plug-in. PyQt is free software developed by the British firm Riverbank Computing.	OR
PySide	PySide is a Python binding of the cross-platform GUI toolkit Qt.	OR
Kivy	The Open Source Python App Development Framework. Build and distribute beautiful Python cross-platform GUI apps with ease. Kivy runs on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows.
PyGUI	An project to develop a cross-platform pythonic GUI API.
Flet	The fastest way to build Flutter apps in Python.
Eel	A little Python library for making simple Electron-like HTML/JS GUI apps.	*
wxPython	Cross-platform GUI toolkit for the Python language. With wxPython software developers can create truly native user interfaces for their Python applications, that run with little or no modifications on Windows, Macs and Linux or other unix-like systems.
Tkinter	The Tkinter module or "Tk interface" is the standard Python interface to the Tk GUI toolkit. Both Tk and Tkinter are available on most Unix platforms, as well as on Windows systems. Tk itself is not part of Python; it is maintained at ActiveState.	**
pywebview	Build GUI for your Python program with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Pysimplegui	PySimpleGUI creates graphical user interfaces (GUIs) using Python, quickly and easily!.
NiceGUI	NiceGUI is an approachable web-based UI toolkit for Python that can self-host with auto-refresh as you update the source, with a rich set of UI widgets.
Toga	Toga is a Python native, OS native, cross-platform GUI toolkit. Toga consists of a library of base components with a shared interface to simplify platform-agnostic GUI development.
Pyloid	Pyloid is the Python backend version of Electron and Tauri, providing an open-source project that allows you to easily utilize various Python integration features

* Unmaintained

** Unclear

R

Project	Description	License
gWidgets	API for writing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) within R. The package is cross-platform (Linux/Mac/Windows) and cross-toolkit (RGtk2, qtbase, tcltk).
fGui	Rapidly create a GUI interface for a function you created by automatically creating widgets for arguments of the function. Automatically parses help routines for context-sensitive help to these arguments. The interface essentially a wrapper to some Tcl/Tk routines to both simplify and facilitate GUI creation. More advanced Tcl/Tk routines/GUI objects can be incorporated into the interface for greater customization for the more experienced.
Shiny	Easy web apps for data science without the compromises

Reason

Project	Description	License
revery-ui	Fast, native, cross-platform UI.

Rebol

Project	Description
Native Gui	The primary objectives of the R3 GUI have been clearly stated in prior documents. However, to be sure we're all in sync: the GUI is designed to make simple apps simple, and sophisticated apps possible. That is, you really can write a useful app in just a few lines of GUI dialect, and a full scale app may require just a few dozen pages

Red

Project	Description	License
Drawing	Draw is a dialect (DSL) of Red language that provides a simple declarative way to specify 2D drawing operations. Such operations are expressed as lists of ordered commands (using blocks of values), which can be freely constructed and changed at run-time.
Native GUI	The Red/View (or just View) component is a graphic system for the Red programming language.
Layout	VID stands for Visual Interface Dialect. Its purpose is to provide a simple dialect (DSL) for describing graphic user interfaces on top of the Red View engine.

Ruby

Project	Description	License
Glimmer	A Domain-Specific Language & metaframework for building GUI apps using Ruby, with bindings for various GUI libraries and also Web.
qtbindings	Ruby bindings for Qt.	OR
tk	Ruby bindings for Tcl/Tk.
ruby-gnome	Ruby bindings from GNOME/GTK3.
JRubyFX	JRuby wrapper on JavaFX.
traveling-ruby	Runtime to bundle Ruby applications into executables.

Rust

Project	Description	License
gtk-rs	Rust bindings for GTK.
tauri	Build smaller, faster, and more secure desktop applications with a web frontend.	and/or
GPUI	A fast, productive UI framework for Rust from the creators of Zed.
Are we GUI yet?	The state of building user interfaces in Rust. A collection of gui frameworks and libraries in rust.	---

V

Project	Description	License
ui	Isaiah's cross-platform GUI library for V. Inspired by the syntax of Java's Swing.
mui	A Cross-Platform UI Library in vlang
viup	A V wrapper for the cross-platform UI library, IUP.
vi-v	Vi-v is a visual scripting UI for vlang. It allows anyone to create their own programs easily without an extensive programming skill.
vxui	vxui is a cross-platform desktop UI framework which use your browser as screen, and use V lang as backend. It reply on Websocket, no http/https, no web server!

Visual programming

Project	Description	License
Blockly	Blockly is a visual programming editor by Google that uses drag-and-drop blocks. It's the engine that powers the most popular coding education programs world.

📖 Related work

• Livecode: Lightweight language with [native GUI], integrated IDE, and visual interface builder.
• Positron: List of electron apps so I can avoid them, and some alternatives to use instead
• Awesome Alternatives to Electron Apps: Electron is an application platform which spreads like a cancer in software development world making your immensely powerful computer feel slow and laggy. Sometimes apps made in Electron are useful, though. This list contains good alternatives to an memory hungry eco-unfriendly Electron software.
• Comparison of Browser Engines: A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interactive visual representation on a user's device. Besides "browser engine", two other related terms are commonly used: "layout engine" and "rendering engine". In theory, layout and rendering (or "painting") could be handled by different engines. In practice, however, these components are tightly coupled and rarely encountered on their own outside of the browser engine.
• Web To Desktop Framework Comparasion: This repository was made to create an objective comparison of multiple framework that grant us to "transform" our web app to desktop application formats.
• Awesome-electronjs-hacking: A curated list of awesome resources about Electron.js (in)security
• Qt: Qt (pronounced "cute") is free and open-source cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications
• jscherer92/Quark: Create Applications with browser technologies using the native engine in your OS.
• Xojo: Build Native, Cross-Platform Apps.Rapid application development for Desktop, Web, Mobile & Raspberry Pi.
• LambdaNative: LambdaNative is freely available under the BSD license, extensively documented, and hosted on GitHub. LambdaNative builds native applications on a wide range of platforms including iOS, Android, Blackberry, OS X, Linux, Windows, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenWrt, from a single source code.
• REVERY: Fast, native, cross-platform UI.
• 8th: 8th lets you use your preferred platform to write and test your code. With one click, you generate the executables for any platform 8th supports, from any platform it supports!.
• CEF: Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). A simple framework for embedding Chromium-based browsers in other applications.
• yue/yue: A library for creating native cross-platform GUI apps.
• Godot: Godot Engine – Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine.
• HaxeUI Haxe based cross platform (desktop, mobile, web) UI framework
• HTA/HTML Application: HTML Application or "HTA" is a Microsoft Windows program whose source code consists of HTML, Dynamic HTML, and one or more scripting languages supported by Internet Explorer, such as VBScript or JScript. The HTML is used to generate the user interface, and the scripting language is used for the program logic. An HTA executes without the constraints of the internet browser security model; in fact, it executes as a "fully trusted" application.

📚 Notes

Consider Progressive Web Apps PWA, if your app doesn't require any platform interactions.

"Progressive Web Apps might not be able to replace every kind of native application, but they can be viable replacements for some apps written with the Electron web wrapper technology". For more info: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/05/27/google-chats-desktop-application-is-now-a-progressive-web-app/

See this: Blazor, ElectronCGI.

❤ Contributions

awesome-electron-alternatives is open to contributions, but I recommend creating an issue or replying in a comment to let me know what you are working on first that way we don't overwrite each other.

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on this project. If you have any questions, feel free to open an issue. And feel free to improve this list by contributing!

📑 License

• Inspired by the awesome list.
• Electron-alternatives is licensed with MIT by sudhakar3697 and contributors.
• The logo of this project is authored, created or licensed by the Electron-js community (brand, open source project), but has no direct relationship with this repository.

🙌 Contributors