// Articles

Guides and deep dives

Guides, tutorials, and comparisons to help you build better backend applications.

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What Is AWS Fargate?

How Fargate works with ECS and EKS, what it costs, and when serverless containers are the right tradeoff.

9 Min Read
A practical guide to using the Terraform AWS Provider

Set up the AWS provider, create your first resource, move state, separate environments, and deploy through CI.

10 Min Read
What Is a Sandbox Environment?

How sandboxes isolate code, where they fit in development, and what changes when the code is untrusted.

8 Min Read
OpenTofu Alternatives in 2026

OpenTofu kept Terraform's model under an open source license. These are the best alternatives in 2026, now that agents write most of the code.

15 Min Read
Convex Alternatives in 2026

The best Convex alternatives in 2026 for teams that need SQL and more choice over how and where their backend runs.

10 Min Read
Internal Developer Platform vs PaaS: What's the Difference

A PaaS is a runtime you deploy to; an IDP is a self-service layer over infrastructure you own. Where they differ on control, ownership, and lock-in, and when each fits.

7 Min Read
Microservices vs Modular Monolith: How to Choose

What real module boundaries look like, how to keep them from rotting, and exactly what you trade against microservices

8 Min Read
Monolith vs Microservices: How to Choose in 2026

Why teams are consolidating, how AI agents change the tradeoff, and a framework for deciding

7 Min Read
Hono vs Encore for AI Coding Agents

Hono ran cheapest in our AI-readiness benchmark and collapsed worst when the test suite started probing for production-readiness.

6 Min Read
Fastify vs Encore for AI Coding Agents

Fastify was the closest non-Encore result in our AI-readiness benchmark, and reaching that result still cost about twice as many tokens.

5 Min Read
NestJS vs Encore for AI Coding Agents

Claude Code on NestJS cost about twice as many tokens as the same agent on Encore, and shipped fewer working production-readiness checks.

7 Min Read
Express vs Encore for AI Coding Agents

What Claude Code shipped when we gave it the same backend tasks on Express and on Encore.

8 Min Read