Catalog
An open-source framework for building internal developer portals with a centralized software catalog and unified tooling.
What is Catalog?
Backstage is an open-source framework for building internal developer portals that centralizes all software assets and development tooling. It solves infrastructure fragmentation by providing a unified platform where teams can manage microservices, documentation, and project templates. The framework enables organizations to maintain autonomy while improving developer productivity through standardized workflows.
Engineering organizations with microservices architectures, platform teams building internal developer platforms, and companies seeking to unify their development tooling and documentation.
Developers choose Backstage for its comprehensive software catalog, extensible plugin architecture, and strong CNCF backing. It uniquely combines project templating, documentation management, and service discovery into a single portal that scales with organizational complexity.
Overview
Backstage is an open framework for building developer portals
Use Cases
Best For
- Centralizing microservices and infrastructure management across large engineering teams
- Building standardized project templates to enforce organizational best practices
- Creating a unified developer portal with integrated documentation and tooling
- Managing software assets like libraries, data pipelines, and ML models in one place
- Improving developer onboarding through self-service project creation
- Platform teams building internal developer platforms (IDPs)
Not Ideal For
- Organizations with monolithic architectures that don't require microservices management
- Teams needing a lightweight, out-of-the-box portal without extensive customization or plugin development
- Companies without dedicated platform engineering resources to maintain and evolve the portal
- Projects focused solely on simple documentation hosting without integrated development workflows
Pros & Cons
Pros
Manages all software assets—microservices, libraries, data pipelines—in a single interface, reducing fragmentation and improving discoverability, as highlighted in the README's key features.
Software Templates enable rapid project creation with organizational best practices baked in, standardizing tooling and accelerating onboarding for developers.
Uses a 'docs like code' approach for technical documentation, making it easy to maintain and find docs within the portal, as described in the TechDocs feature.
A growing collection of open-source plugins allows for custom integrations and functionality expansion, mentioned in the plugin ecosystem section.
Hosted by CNCF as an Incubation project, with active support via Discord, RFCs, and regular updates, ensuring long-term viability and collaboration.
Cons
Requires significant configuration and infrastructure deployment, as indicated by the detailed getting started documentation and architecture overview, which can be time-consuming.
Developers must grasp Backstage's plugin architecture and customization options, which can be overwhelming for teams new to developer portals or without prior experience.
Running Backstage demands substantial server resources and ongoing maintenance, making it costly for small-scale deployments or organizations with limited IT support.
Core functionalities often depend on third-party plugins, which may vary in quality, require additional integration work, and introduce dependency risks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Found a gem we're missing?
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.