SST alternatives in 2026: What to use now that development has slowed

In 2025, the development of Serverless Stack (SST), a framework that enhanced AWS serverless development, slowed as the team shifted focus to OpenCode, an AI coding agent. While SST remains functional with maintenance updates, Northflank emerged as the strongest alternative for most teams, offering a multi-cloud workload platform that supports infrastructure-as-code through JSON templates and allows deployment across any cloud provider, including AWS, GCP, and Azure, without vendor lock-in. Northflank's Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) feature enables users to maintain full infrastructure ownership and use existing cloud credits, providing flexibility and avoiding limitations tied to serverless-specific constructs. Other alternatives to SST include Pulumi, Render, and Railway, each catering to different needs based on team expertise and project requirements. While SST is still viable for existing setups built around AWS Lambda, Northflank offers advantages like faster deployment, built-in observability, and active development, making it a compelling choice for teams seeking an SST replacement.