Top 16 'Instant-On' Cloud Development Environments to explore for developers ditching 'works on my machine' bugs - Goh Ling Yong
We’ve all been there. You spend days, maybe even weeks, crafting the perfect feature. It passes all the local tests, the code is clean, and you push it up for review with a sigh of relief. Then, the bug report comes in. Your feature is crashing the staging environment. You fire back the five most dreaded words in software development: "But... it works on my machine!"
This isn't just a meme; it's a productivity black hole. The "works on my machine" problem is a symptom of a deeper issue: inconsistent development environments. Differences in operating systems, dependency versions, environment variables, or even a stray file on your local machine can lead to hours of frustrating debugging. It slows down new developer onboarding, makes collaboration a pain, and introduces unpredictable bugs into production.
The good news? We're living in the golden age of the solution: Cloud Development Environments (CDEs). These are on-demand, configurable, and reproducible dev environments that live in the cloud, not on your laptop. With a CDE, every developer on the team—and every CI/CD pipeline—gets an identical, pre-configured workspace with the click of a button. It’s time to ditch the excuses and embrace the future of development.
Here are 16 of the top 'instant-on' Cloud Development Environments you should explore today.
1. GitHub Codespaces
If you live on GitHub, Codespaces is the most seamless entry into the world of CDEs. It's built directly into the GitHub UI, allowing you to spin up a fully configured development environment for any repository in seconds. It’s not just an editor; it’s a full Linux container in the cloud, accessible via a web-based VS Code interface or even by connecting your local VS Code.
The magic of Codespaces lies in its deep integration with the developer workflow. You can create a codespace for a pull request, test changes in a clean environment, and then shut it down without ever cloning the repository to your local machine. This is a game-changer for open-source contributions and reviewing PRs from colleagues.
Pro Tip: The key to unlocking the full power of Codespaces is the .devcontainer/devcontainer.json file. By adding this file to your repository, you can define the Docker image, install specific tools, automatically install VS Code extensions, and set environment variables. This ensures every developer gets the exact same, production-ready environment every single time.
2. Gitpod
Gitpod was one of the true pioneers in this space, and its maturity shows. It's an open-source platform that turns any Git repository into a ready-to-code CDE. While it has deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, its standout feature has always been prebuilds.
Gitpod can watch your repository, and whenever you push new code, it proactively runs a prebuild. This process checks out the code, downloads all dependencies, and compiles everything before you even open the workspace. The result? You can launch a fully built, indexed, and tested environment for even the largest monorepos in seconds, not minutes. Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we appreciate anything that cuts down on waiting for npm install!
Pro Tip: Leverage the .gitpod.yml file to configure your prebuilds. Define the tasks that need to run, like installing dependencies and running database migrations. A well-configured prebuild makes the developer experience feel truly instant.
3. CodeSandbox
While CodeSandbox started as a lightning-fast in-browser playground for front-end frameworks like React and Vue, it has evolved into a powerful, collaborative CDE. It excels at web development, offering an incredibly fast feedback loop and unparalleled real-time collaboration features that feel like Google Docs for code.
Its new Pro platform provides powerful micro-VMs that can run almost any back-end service, moving it far beyond its front-end roots. CodeSandbox is particularly strong for teams that need to quickly prototype, share live demos with stakeholders, or conduct pair-programming interviews. The entire environment runs in the browser, making it accessible from any device.
Pro Tip: Use CodeSandbox for your design system's component library. It makes it incredibly easy for designers and developers to collaborate, test components in isolation, and share interactive examples with the rest of the team.
4. DevPod
DevPod is a fascinating and powerful open-source tool that takes a different approach. It's not a hosted platform; it's a client-only tool that lets you create and manage CDEs on any back-end—your local machine (with Docker), a remote server via SSH, or any major cloud provider like AWS, GCP, or Azure.
This gives you the best of both worlds: the CDE experience of reproducible environments defined by a devcontainer.json, but with the freedom to choose your own infrastructure. You're not locked into any single provider's pricing or hardware. It’s perfect for developers who want control and flexibility without sacrificing the convenience of CDEs.
Pro Tip: Use DevPod to create consistent environments across your team, even if some developers prefer to run things locally while others use a shared cloud VM. The same devcontainer.json ensures everyone has the same tools and dependencies, regardless of the underlying host.
5. JetBrains Fleet (with Space)
For the millions of developers who can't imagine coding without the power of IntelliJ, PyCharm, or WebStorm, the JetBrains ecosystem offers its own CDE solution. JetBrains Space is an all-in-one platform for software teams that includes Git hosting, CI/CD, and, most importantly, dev environments.
These environments can be launched in the cloud and accessed through JetBrains Fleet, their next-generation IDE built from the ground up for both local and remote development. The experience is seamless, providing the same powerful code intelligence and refactoring tools that JetBrains users know and love, but running on powerful cloud servers.
Pro Tip: If your team is already heavily invested in the JetBrains ecosystem, integrating Space and Fleet is a natural next step. The unified experience from IDE to code review to deployment can significantly streamline your workflow.
6. AWS Cloud9
AWS Cloud9 is a cloud-based IDE and CDE provided by Amazon Web Services. Its biggest strength is its native integration with the entire AWS ecosystem. You can spin up a Cloud9 environment on an EC2 instance of any size, and it comes pre-packaged with tools for AWS development, including a terminal with the AWS CLI pre-authenticated.
This makes it incredibly easy to develop, run, and debug applications that are tightly coupled with AWS services like Lambda, S3, and DynamoDB. It also features great collaboration tools, allowing multiple developers to code in the same environment simultaneously.
Pro Tip: Use Cloud9's built-in Lambda function integration for serverless development. You can write, test, and deploy Lambda functions directly from the IDE, dramatically speeding up the serverless development cycle.
7. Google Cloud Workstations
Google's entry into the CDE space, Cloud Workstations, is a managed platform focused on security, speed, and enterprise-grade control. It allows organizations to define standardized workstation configurations and provide their developers with secure, high-performance environments accessible from a browser.
A key feature is its private networking capabilities, allowing dev environments to securely access resources inside a VPC without exposing them to the public internet. It’s built for large organizations that need to manage developer access and configurations at scale while ensuring a fast and consistent experience.
Pro Tip: Integrate Cloud Workstations with Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) to enforce zero-trust security policies for your developer environments, ensuring only authenticated and authorized users can access them.
8. Coder
Coder is a powerful, self-hosted CDE platform designed for enterprise use. It allows companies to run CDEs on their own infrastructure, whether that's in a private cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) or on-premise Kubernetes clusters. This provides maximum control over security, data residency, and costs.
Coder uses Terraform to define and provision developer workspaces, meaning you can version control your environments just like you do with your production infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-Code). It supports accessing workspaces via SSH or a web browser, and it can run any IDE, including VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, and even Vim.
Pro Tip: Use Coder to provide developers with access to powerful, GPU-enabled machines for machine learning development without having to equip every developer with expensive local hardware.
9. StackBlitz (Codeflow)
StackBlitz is famous for its groundbreaking WebContainer technology, which allows it to run a full Node.js environment entirely within the browser. This makes it astonishingly fast—environments spin up in milliseconds, not seconds. Their CDE offering, Codeflow, leverages this technology for a truly "instant" development experience.
While originally focused on front-end and Node.js projects, StackBlitz is expanding its capabilities. For any project that fits within its ecosystem, the speed is simply unmatched. It’s perfect for bug reproductions, quick experiments, and any web development workflow where startup time is critical.
Pro Tip: Use the stackblitz.com/github URL prefix to instantly open any GitHub repository in a live, running StackBlitz environment. It’s one of the fastest ways to explore and contribute to a new project.
10. Replit
Replit is more than just a CDE; it's a social coding platform. It provides a simple, accessible, and collaborative in-browser environment that supports over 50 languages. It's incredibly popular in the education space and for hobbyist developers, but its power shouldn't be underestimated for professional work.
Replit includes features like AI-powered code completion ("Ghostwriter"), one-click deployments, and a "Bounties" system where you can earn money by solving coding challenges for others. It excels at making coding and shipping simple applications as frictionless as possible.
Pro Tip: Use Replit's "Deployments" feature to instantly host a web service or bot you're working on. It’s a fantastic way to quickly share a working prototype with your team or a client.
11. GitLab Remote Development
As a direct competitor to GitHub, GitLab has been steadily building out its own integrated CDE solution. Leveraging their acquisition of Unbabel and a deep partnership, they're creating a seamless remote development experience directly within the GitLab platform.
The goal is to allow developers to launch a workspace for any merge request or branch, fully configured from a .devfile in the repository. As this feature matures, it will become the default choice for the millions of developers and organizations that rely on GitLab for their entire software development lifecycle.
Pro Tip: If your team is all-in on GitLab, keep a close watch on this feature. Adopting it early can create a highly streamlined workflow, from issue tracking and code hosting all the way to a cloud-based development environment.
12. Okteto
Okteto is a CDE built specifically for the age of microservices and Kubernetes. It takes a unique approach: instead of developing in an isolated container, Okteto lets you develop your application directly inside your Kubernetes cluster.
It intelligently replaces your production container in a development namespace with a development container that has your local code synchronized to it. This means you are developing in a realistic, production-like environment from day one, with access to all the other microservices, databases, and message queues in the cluster. It’s the ultimate solution for killing "works on my machine" bugs in a complex microservices architecture.
Pro Tip: Use Okteto's preview environments to automatically spin up a full, shareable instance of your application for every pull request, making code reviews more effective and collaborative.
13. VSCodium + Dev Containers (The DIY Approach)
For the developer who loves open-source and ultimate control, you can roll your own CDE-like experience. The key ingredients are VSCodium (the fully open-source build of VS Code) and Microsoft's official Dev Containers extension.
The extension allows you to connect your local IDE to a Docker container running anywhere—on your local machine, a powerful server in your office, or a cloud VM. By defining a devcontainer.json, you get the same reproducible environment as GitHub Codespaces, but you manage the infrastructure yourself.
Pro Tip: Set up a personal "dev server" on a cheap cloud provider like Hetzner or DigitalOcean. Install Docker, then use the Dev Containers extension to connect to it. This gives you a powerful, persistent cloud development environment for a very low cost.
14. code-server
code-server is the open-source project from Coder that lets you run VS Code on a remote server and access it in the browser. It's the foundational technology that powers many other CDE platforms.
By installing code-server on any Linux machine (from a Raspberry Pi to a massive cloud server), you can get a browser-based VS Code experience that you completely control. It's a fantastic, lightweight way to set up a personal CDE without the overhead of a full platform. I've discussed this with Goh Ling Yong, and we both agree it's a brilliant tool for developers who want a simple, self-hosted solution.
Pro Tip: Secure your code-server instance with a password and run it behind a reverse proxy like Nginx or Caddy to enable HTTPS. This makes it a secure and professional remote coding environment.
15. Visual Studio Codespaces (Azure)
This can be a point of confusion, but it's important to distinguish it from GitHub Codespaces. Visual Studio Codespaces is Microsoft's Azure-centric CDE offering. While it shares some technology with its GitHub counterpart, it's designed for teams deeply embedded in the Microsoft and Azure ecosystem.
It offers tight integration with Azure services, Visual Studio (the full IDE, not just VS Code), and Windows-based development environments. If your team develops .NET applications on Windows and deploys heavily to Azure, this is the most native and integrated CDE solution available.
Pro Tip: Use Visual Studio Codespaces to provision powerful, cloud-based build agents that mirror your development environment, ensuring consistency between development and CI.
16. Brev.dev
Brev.dev is a newer CDE that carves out a specific and important niche: GPU-powered development for AI/ML and data science. Setting up a local machine with the correct GPU drivers, CUDA versions, and Python dependencies can be a nightmare. Brev aims to make this process effortless.
It allows you to spin up a powerful GPU-backed cloud instance in minutes, with popular data science tools and libraries pre-installed. You can connect to it via SSH or a browser-based VS Code, letting you get straight to training models instead of fighting with your environment.
Pro Tip: Use Brev to run a Jupyter Notebook on a powerful GPU instance. This allows you to perform heavy-duty data analysis and model training from any device, without needing an expensive local workstation.
Conclusion: Your Machine Is No Longer the Source of Truth
The era of "it works on my machine" is drawing to a close, and for good reason. Cloud Development Environments represent a fundamental shift in how we build software, moving the source of truth from an individual's laptop to a version-controlled, reproducible configuration in the cloud.
The benefits are clear: faster onboarding for new developers, elimination of environment-related bugs, seamless collaboration, and the ability to code from anywhere on any device.
The best CDE for you depends on your tech stack, your team's workflow, and your cloud ecosystem. Whether you're an open-source contributor jumping into a new project with GitHub Codespaces, a Kubernetes developer debugging microservices with Okteto, or a data scientist training models with Brev.dev, there's a solution ready to boost your productivity.
So, pick one that looks interesting, give it a try on a side project, and experience the freedom of leaving "my machine" behind.
Have you tried any of these CDEs? Did I miss your favorite? Share your experiences and recommendations in the comments below!
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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