Rust-native Solidity toolchain (forge/cast/anvil/chisel) whose test runner ships all six depth capabilities natively, cut a nightly on 28 September 2026 with 1,249 master commits since 30 June 2026, and publishes GitHub-attested binaries a team can pin and verify — but publishes no framework exit path. Strongest on maintenance that is actually happening (10/10): Foundry's release page lists a nightly dated 28 September 2026 and nightlies on six other September days, and stable v1.8.3 is dated 15 September 2026. The master branch carries 1,249 commits since 30 June 2026, and the repository is not archived. Weakest on lock-in and documented exit path (8/10): Contract source is plain Solidity and Hardhat 3 runs Foundry-style Solidity tests, but the only interop Foundry documents runs inward: a Hardhat-compatibility section with node_modules remappings. Leaving means rewriting foundry.toml, remappings and the forge script deploy layer. Published price: No pricing is published, because the toolchain is free and open source.
Dev Frameworks
Dev Frameworks evaluated across maintenance that is actually happening, testing depth the toolchain itself ships, lock-in and documented exit path, and distribution, pinning and disclosure.
Ranked here: smart-contract development frameworks, the toolchain a team writes, tests and ships code with, from compiler driver and test runner to deploy pipeline. Not ranked here: hosted RPC endpoints, audits bought from a firm, vendor-hosted simulation or monitoring, services that launch or operate a chain, and bundlers, paymasters or gas sponsorship.
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How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.
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Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/30/25/15, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20 (constant here), evidence depth 18 (constant here), ease of use 10 (constant here), institutional trust 8 (constant here). Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
- Contract failure: the code holding the funds is exploited.Scored by Distribution, Pinning And Disclosure · 15% (Foundry 10/10, Hardhat 8/10, Starknet Foundry (snforge) 5/10)
- Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.Scored by Maintenance That Is Actually Happening · 30% (Foundry 10/10, Hardhat 10/10, Starknet Foundry (snforge) 9/10)Scored by Lock-In And Documented Exit Path · 25% (Foundry 8/10, Hardhat 9/10, Starknet Foundry (snforge) 6/10)
What matters most before choosing in this category
Start with whether the thing you are comparing is a toolchain at all, because two of the seven are not. One describes itself as "a combination or stack of other great tools" and hands every testing capability to whichever of Hardhat or Foundry you picked at install; another is an IDE whose own test engine covers two of the six capabilities scored here. Choosing either means you have not yet chosen a toolchain, you have chosen a wrapper around one. Then read maintenance as dated releases rather than popularity, because developer tooling is where a dead project hides best: the stars, the tutorials and the search rank all outlive the final commit by years. Then price the exit, which almost nobody does at adoption time, because the exit bill is denominated in TESTS — the part of a codebase a framework owns most completely. A toolchain whose test language no other toolchain runs is far more expensive to leave than its ergonomics suggest on day one.
The #1 overall and the scoring weights
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on maintenance that is actually happening, testing depth the toolchain itself ships, lock-in and documented exit path, and distribution, pinning and disclosure.