Truffle Alternatives After the Truffle and Ganache Sunset

Truffle is no longer maintained. Consensys announced the sunset of Truffle and Ganache on September 21, 2023, offered 90 days of support, and said both codebases would remain available as public archives starting December 20, 2023. The old docs now sit on archive.trufflesuite.com. The packages still install from npm, but truffle 5.11.5 dates from September 13, 2023 and ganache 7.9.2 from December 21, 2023. Consensys also said Ganache would not be upgraded for the next hard fork, so every Ethereum network upgrade since then is missing from it.

The official migration advice was to move to Hardhat, and Consensys said it would partner with the Hardhat team on the transition. The same post named Foundry, Remix, thirdweb and OpenZeppelin as other routes. That advice is now three years old. Hardhat has shipped version 3 since, and Hardhat 2 reaches end of life at the Hegota hard fork or on June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. A Truffle project that still needs moving should go straight to Hardhat 3 or Foundry.

Truffle did three jobs: a framework for compiling, testing and deploying; Ganache as the local chain; and Truffle Boxes as starter templates. The picks below cover each one. Brownie, the Python framework, is left out because its README now says it is no longer actively maintained. Readers who used truffle debug to step through failed transactions can find hosted debuggers and simulators in our Tenderly alternatives guide.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Hardhat

Consensys picked Hardhat as Truffle's successor, and the project layout explains why. A Hardhat repo has a config file, a contracts folder and a test folder of TypeScript tests, so a Truffle team keeps its mental model. Version 3 adds Solidity tests next to the TypeScript ones: the getting started guide puts them in contracts with a .t.sol extension, or in test as plain .sol files.

Test code moves from web3.js to viem in the sample project, which is the biggest rewrite for old Truffle suites. The sample also ships a script that sends an OP Stack transaction, and the docs carry pages on multichain and OP Stack support. The npm package is at 3.21.2, published October 29, 2026, and its simulated network runs on a separate package, EDR, at 0.25.0.

Best for: JavaScript and TypeScript teams that want the migration path Consensys itself recommended.

Pricing:

• Free and open source under the MIT licence
• No paid tier

Watch out for:

• Hardhat 3 needs Node.js v22.13.0 or later, per the getting started page. Older CI images may need an upgrade first.
• Migration guides from 2023 target Hardhat 2. That line now gets only bug fixes, security fixes and Glamsterdam hard fork support, and stops at Hegota or June 1, 2027.

Official site: Hardhat.

Foundry

Foundry drops JavaScript entirely. Unit tests, fuzz tests and deploy scripts are written in Solidity, the same language as the contracts, and the toolchain arrives as binaries through foundryup: forge builds and tests, cast talks to chains from the shell, anvil runs a local node and chisel is a Solidity REPL. There is no node_modules folder to keep in sync.

Truffle users raised on Mocha have the most to relearn here. In return they get one language across the repo and fast test runs. Releases come often: v1.9.0 arrived in early November 2026, a few days after 1.8.7, and nightly builds come out almost every day.

Best for: Solidity-first teams who would rather write tests in Solidity than in JavaScript.

Pricing:

• Free and open source on GitHub
• No paid tier

Watch out for:

• On Windows, foundryup only runs in Git Bash or WSL. The install docs say PowerShell and Command Prompt are not supported.

Official site: Foundry.

Anvil

Anyone who only needs a new Ganache can install Foundry and use Anvil on its own. The Anvil docs describe an in-memory node that starts with 10 development accounts holding 10,000 ETH each. Account count, balance and mnemonic change with --accounts, --balance and --mnemonic, so existing Truffle test fixtures can be matched.

Forking is one flag: anvil --fork-url plus an RPC URL copies the state of mainnet or any EVM chain at a chosen block. Mining can be instant, interval, mixed or manual, and the pending pool can be inspected, which covers the timing tricks people used Ganache's block time setting for. Hardhat users get a similar node with npx hardhat node, so Anvil matters most to Foundry and Python setups.

Best for: Projects that kept a Ganache chain in their test scripts and want the nearest replacement.

Pricing:

• Free, installed with Foundry

Watch out for:

• The default accounts come from a public mnemonic. The docs warn to set your own when forking mainnet or using a public RPC.
• Anvil is command line only. The block and transaction browser in Ganache's desktop app has no counterpart here.

Official site: Anvil.

Remix IDE

Remix needs no install at all. Open remix.ethereum.org, write a contract, compile it and deploy to an in-browser chain or through a wallet. For a quick prototype, a workshop or checking how a contract behaves before you wire up a framework, Remix needs no local install at all.

The Remix site now pairs the IDE with RemixAI, a QuickDApp front-end generator and paid AI plans. Remix Desktop is a native app that saves files to disk which removes the browser storage problem below. The code is open source under the Ethereum organisation on GitHub.

Best for: Prototyping, teaching and one-off deployments where installing a toolchain is overkill.

Pricing:

• Free plan: no charge, includes RemixAI assistant, QuickDApp and pay-as-you-go AI
• Lite: $3.99/month, 40K AI credits
• Starter: $9.99/month, 100K AI credits
• Pro: $19.99/month, 200K AI credits
• Extra credits: $1 buys 10,000. Cloud save is on paid plans only

Watch out for:

• In the browser, workspaces live in IndexedDB. The Remix docs warn that browser storage is ephemeral and a crash can lose all data, so push to Git or use Remix Desktop.

Official site: Remix IDE.

Ape

Python developers have Ape from ApeWorX. Brownie's README now says Brownie is no longer actively maintained and points readers to Ape, so it is also the default for teams who once picked Brownie over Truffle. Install is pipx install eth-ape, and the quickstart suggests the recommended-plugins extra on top.

Ape is built around plugins. Contract languages and chains come as separate packages, so a project can mix Solidity and Vyper or target an L2 without changing frameworks. Version 0.8.53 landed on PyPI on October 30, 2026, under Apache-2.0. Docker images exist too, including a slim one with no plugins.

Best for: Python and Vyper developers who want a maintained framework instead of Brownie or Truffle.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (Apache-2.0)
• No paid tier

Watch out for:

• The quickstart lists Linux and macOS only. Windows users need WSL, and version 0.8.53 supports Python 3.10 to 3.14.
• Plugins from outside the ApeWorX GitHub organisation trigger a third-party warning and are installed at your own risk.

Official site: Ape.

Wake

Ackee Blockchain Security, an audit firm, built Wake for the testing it does on client code. Tests are Python on top of pytest. Wake adds property-based fuzzing, a manually guided fuzzing mode and built-in detectors for reentrancy, overflows and similar bugs. A language server and a VS Code extension, Solidity (Wake), flag issues while you type.

Wake does not replace the local chain. Its README says it works with Anvil, Hardhat and Ganache as the node underneath, so pair it with Anvil. The package is at 4.22.2 from October 22, 2026, under the ISC licence, and GitHub Actions exist for running its detectors in CI.

Best for: Teams that care most about fuzzing and bug detection and already think in pytest.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (ISC)

Watch out for:

• The README says Rosetta must be enabled on Apple Silicon Macs, an extra step that Foundry and Hardhat do not ask for.

Official site: Wake.

Scaffold-ETH 2

Truffle Boxes gave you a contract plus a front end in one command. Scaffold-ETH 2 does the same job today. Running npx create-eth@latest asks you to choose Hardhat or Foundry underneath, then generates a Next.js app with a RainbowKit wallet button and hooks for reading and writing your contracts.

The generator package, create-eth, is at 2.0.23 from July 30, 2026, under MIT. Because the contract side is plain Hardhat or Foundry, you can drop the front end later and keep the rest of the repo.

Best for: Hackathon teams and solo builders who want contracts and a working dapp UI on day one.

Pricing:

• Free and open source (MIT)

Watch out for:

• The install guide needs Node v20.18.3 or later, Yarn and Git, plus Foundryup if you choose Foundry. Teams with no front end to build carry code they will not use.

Official site: Scaffold-ETH 2.

How to choose

When to stay with Truffle

Keeping Truffle only makes sense for a frozen project: a contract already deployed, never touched again, where the old test suite just has to run. In that case pin truffle 5.11.5 and ganache 7.9.2 and an older Node.js in a container, and expect no fixes. Anything that will see new code, new compiler versions or a new network upgrade should move, since the tools have had no releases since 2023.

Frequently asked questions