About Stack Picker

What this is

Stack Picker is a short quiz that turns a few questions about your project into one clear tech stack recommendation - a frontend framework, a backend language, a database, or all three. It's aimed at people who are past the "which framework is best" debates and just want a sensible default so they can start building.

Around the quiz, the site has a full write-up of every pick the quiz can make, learning primers for each technology it covers, side-by-side comparisons, and step-by-step guides for building and deploying your first project.

Who's behind it

Stack Picker is written and maintained by Stuart Mathieson, an independent web developer based in Scotland. Stuart built it to give people starting out what they most often ask for and rarely get: a straight answer, with the reasoning shown, instead of a list of options and "it depends".

It's a one-person, independent project. It isn't affiliated with any of the frameworks, languages, hosting companies or vendors it covers.

Editorial policy

• Who writes it. The recommendations, primers, comparisons and guides are published by Stuart Mathieson, and the quiz's logic is a set of hand-written rules - not an AI model - described in full on the methodology page.
• Independence. There are no sponsored recommendations and no affiliate links. No company pays to be recommended, mentioned or ranked. If the site shows advertising, advertisers have no influence over what it recommends or says.
• Accuracy. Code in the guides is written to work as shown with current versions, and content pages carry a "last reviewed" date. Pages are re-checked when a technology they cover changes significantly - a new major version, a deprecated tool, or a change to a free tier - and the date is updated.
• Opinions are labelled as opinions. Where the site makes a judgement call - React or Vue, PHP or Node - it says so and explains the trade-off, so you can disagree with the reasoning rather than just the result.
• Corrections. If something is wrong or out of date, please say so. Confirmed errors are fixed and the page's review date updated.

Why it's built this way

The quiz runs entirely in your browser - no accounts, no server-side tracking of your answers, no sign-up wall. That's a deliberate choice: recommending a tech stack shouldn't require handing over your data first. The site itself is plain HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript, which is also the first thing it recommends to beginners building a simple site.

Get in touch

Feedback on a recommendation, a correction, or a technology you'd like covered: email [email protected] or see the contact page.