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Show HN: Encore – Type-safe back end framework that generates infra from code

https://github.com/encoredev/encore
39•andout_•2h ago

Comments

thecupisblue•2h ago
9x faster than express is a bold claim, would be interesting to see how it holds up with real application logic and some real benchmarks/usecases.
andout_•2h ago
That's for request handling overhead. Real-world speedup depends on your bottleneck (DB, external APIs, etc.), but the gains still apply. Good feedback though, and we have more benchmarks planned regardless.
wolando•2h ago
Part of the selling point of terraform is that I can easily switch clouds if I need to. That's only partially true, most of your terraform would need to change to move from e.g. AWS to GCP, but still, your (hard-fought) experience with terraform on one platform will help when moving to another. If I define my infra the encore way, will I be locked in to one cloud, or can I easily migrate if I need to? Furthermore, I only see Go and Typescript, do you have a roadmap for supporting more languages?
andout_•2h ago
Good question! With Encore, your application code is actually more portable than with Terraform because you are defining infrastructure semantically (eg. "I need a Postgres database"), not with cloud-specific config. The same code deploys to AWS, GCP, or even locally with Docker so no Terraform rewrite is needed when switching clouds.

As for the language support; we support Go and TypeScript today. We're focusing on making these rock-solid first, but more languages are on the roadmap. Python is the likely next candidate.

ericmcer•33m ago
How could it even achieve that? GCP and AWS don’t follow some higher standardized setup. If you use GCP app engine nothing exactly like it exists in AWS, not to mention even similar services like s3 have totally different configs and behaviors.

If I really cared about that I would just use k8s instead of hoping an infra as code tool mapped all these services somehow.

stmblast•2h ago
the type-safe infrastructure primitives are interesting, curious how it compares to something like effect or nestjs for actual production use
andout_•2h ago
Different scope. NestJS organizes app code, Effect does functional composition - both still need separate infra tooling. Encore handles services + infrastructure + deployment as one thing. You could use Effect/NestJS patterns inside Encore apps though. Happy to answer specifics!
rubenvanwyk•2h ago
Have been watching Encore for a while, excited about prospects of it in other languages like Python!
ninetyninenine•1h ago
Type safety is emphasized here and Python type safety has a lot of work that needs to be done to its
danielstocks•1h ago
Happy Encore customer here! I’m kind of surprised they haven’t gotten more attention. It’s like the DX of Vercel for backend and infra, but open source and you can connect it to your existing cloud provider (we use GCP, but also works with AWS). We rarely have to think about about infra or CI/CD things. It just works, and on the rare occasion it doesn’t the team has been super quick to resolve it.

It’s like having a in-house 24/7 dev ops infra team but for a fraction of the cost!

Disclaimer: Our infrastructure needs are not super complex: Web services, SQL, key-value store, pub-sub and few other parts, your mileage may vary depending on your needs.

machekb•1h ago
Encore founder here. Thanks for the feedback, great to hear you're happy with Encore.
sausagefeet•1h ago
How does Encore handle the following scenarios?

1. I want to deploy to a testing environment where I may want to use different users, different sized services, or even mock services so I don't have to pay for them? 2. I want to develop in an isolated environment (maybe without internet or simply I'm trying to develop a narrow feature that doesn't require the rest of the infrastructure)? 3. How does it handle security elements like VPCs, IAM roles, all these things that are the context my application runs in that I don't necessarily want to couple to my application code?

andout_•1h ago
1. You can configure your services to be cohosted on computes, and each environment can be configured independently. Encore also provides free hosting through Encore Cloud Hosting

2. The `encore run` command automatically starts local emulators for your infrastructure and starts the app as a single binary.

3. Encore uses static analysis to determine not only what infrastructure is used, but also what uses it. Based on these requirements we provision relevant VPCs, subnets, IAM Roles, SQL users, Security Groups etc. using best practices for each cloud provider. The specifics depend on how you configure each environment, and you can inspect all provisioned resources in your cloud console (and require approval for new cost-bearing infrastructure, and so on and so forth)

phpnode•1h ago
Curious about how this compares to alchemy - https://alchemy.run/
andout_•58m ago
I haven't heard about Alchemy before, but from skimming their docs it looks like Terraform/Pulumi in code form where you explicitly configure infrastructure. Whereas with Encore, you define what you need directly in your application code (databases, pub/sub topics, cron jobs as type-safe objects), and Encore handles provisioning across all environments. Plus you get local development tools, distributed tracing, and automatic API documentation out of the box. The key difference is the toolbox you get + the fact that you're writing application logic, not infrastructure config.
fulafel•1h ago
How does it compare with SST?
andout_•51m ago
SST is AWS-specific and focuses on infrastructure-as-code for serverless apps (CDK wrapper). Encore is cloud-agnostic and works by parsing your application code to understand what infrastructure you need, then provisions it automatically on AWS, GCP, or locally. SST gives you more control over AWS-specific resources, Encore optimizes for development speed and portability. Different trade-offs depending on whether you're locked into AWS or want flexibility.
ForHackernews•1h ago
This an interesting idea, but I'd be skeptical of having this much coupling between application code and infrastructure. It's like an anti-12 Factor App.

It might make sense for something like a "serverless" app where the units of the business logic are intended to map directly onto cloud provider entities.

It reminds me of https://aws.github.io/chalice/ but cloud-agnostic and Typescript in place of Python

andout_•44m ago
I'd argue it's the opposite of coupling. Your application code references logical resources (database connection, pub/sub topic, bucket) without knowing anything about the underlying infrastructure. Encore extracts these needs and a configurable planner transforms them into actual infrastructure.

The same application code can run locally (Docker), on AWS (RDS, SQS, Lambda), or GCP (Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, Cloud Run) without changes. That's less coupling than explicitly configuring cloud-specific resources in Terraform or even using cloud SDKs directly.

Re: Chalice - similar idea but Chalice is AWS-only and focused on serverless functions. Encore is cloud-agnostic and works for any backend architecture (monoliths, microservices, containers, functions).

_pdp_•50m ago
cool...

btw, on a tangent, I always thought that infra can be defined in typescript types.... is is strange but no need for custom language

someone please steal this idea and make something out of it

embedding-shape•47m ago
Ever tried Pulumi? I myself am allergic to TypeScript, but seems they support using it, among a ton of other languages: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/iac/languages-sdks/javascript/
nevon•46m ago
There already exists many implementations of this idea. CDK, Pulumi and Winglang are the ones that come to mind as probably the most well known.
krosaen•35m ago
If there is a primitive not currently supported (say running a temporal workflow service) is it possible to define a new primitive for this? Just wondering what it looks like if/when you need something not currently supported.
andout_•31m ago
You can just use the resource as you'd normally would and then use e.g. secrets to define the connection settings per environment. You would however need to provision the resource yourself for all your envs. We have a terraform plugin to help you automate it.
Etheryte•28m ago
What's the pricing model? Couldn't figure that out neither on Github nor on your webpage.
andout_•26m ago
Encore (the framework and CLI) is fully open source and free to use. You can deploy anywhere by generating Docker images with `encore build docker`.

Encore Cloud (optional managed platform) has a generous free tier and paid plans for production teams that want automatic infrastructure provisioning in their own AWS/GCP accounts. You can find more details at encore.cloud/pricing

vmesel•25m ago
Encore user here, support sucks and the Environment Destruction feature does not work properly, I have an environment that was stuck destroying for days (did it manually later on AWS).

Please, improve the support, we would love to pay if you guys were responsive enough.

machekb•23m ago
Founder here. Sorry to hear your not happy with the support, appreciate the transparent feedback. We do our best to be responsive for community support requests, but sometimes we can't keep up with the volume. FWIW we offer paid private support if you feel you really need super fast response.
Jonovono•1m ago
Yea really surprised encore isn’t more known and popular. Between it and convex they are the best things right now in building backends.

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