Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Joystick VS DevCycle

Compare Joystick VS DevCycle and see what are their differences

Joystick logo Joystick

Hate JSON management? So do we. That's why we built Joystick: A modern, robust remote config platform for apps and games. Simple to get started. Powerful enough to grow with you. No per-seat charges. Fast, comprehensive APIs. Passionate support.

DevCycle logo DevCycle

DevCycle helps modern product engineering teams release code faster and safer.
  • Joystick Diff editor for easy change visibility.
    Diff editor for easy change visibility. //
    2025-05-01
  • Joystick Intuitive config content management.
    Intuitive config content management. //
    2025-05-01
  • Joystick Natively multi-environment.
    Natively multi-environment. //
    2025-05-01
  • Joystick Sync between environments easily
    Sync between environments easily //
    2025-05-01

Joystick is the modern solution for JSON remote config management. We put dynamic content and remote configs at your finger-tips with modern tools to manage versioning, multiple environments, schema protection, feature flagging, webhooks, segmentation, AB testin, change review, permissions, and much more.

We are simple to use; get started in 8 mins. We also have powerful features that grow and scale with you.

Try us for free. No credit card required. 30k requests per month included. No per-seat charges. Usage-based billing as you scale. We have served billions of requests reliably.

  • DevCycle Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-16

Joystick

$ Details
freemium
Platforms
JavaScript PHP Python Csharp Godot Unity TypeScript Java
Release Date
2024 January

Joystick features and specs

  • Full JSON and More
    Go beyond simple key-value pairs with JSON of any complexity. We also support YAML, XML, etc.
  • Lightning Fast Config Retrieval
    Get real-time config updates with lightening fast response times. Configs are cached at the edge so your app or game gets them fast!
  • Revision History
    Keep a history of all changes. Easily review diffs or revert back to previous revisions.
  • Natively Multi-Environment
    Each environment can have it's own set of configs. Sync between environments effortlessly with built-in diff and sync tools.
  • Permissions and Environment Protection
    Granular access and environment protection so your important environments are safe.
  • Change Review and Management
    Workflow to request reviews from teammates prior to promoting configs to different environments.
  • Asset CDN / Management
    Asset manager for images, asset bundles and more built in. Generate CDN links to assets, that then you can use directly within your configs.
  • Schema Protection
    Each config can have a schema attached so inputs are protected.
  • Webhooks
    Trigger webhooks when configs change for powerful workflow integrations.
  • Google Sheets Integration
    One-click import JSON from any Google Sheet with our Google Sheets add-on.
  • Multiple SDKs
    SDKs for Javascript, Python, Unity, Godot, PHP and much more.
  • Change Log
    A full log of any changes made to configs, environments and more so you have full traceability.
  • Robust APIs
    Robust set of management APIs so you can create, edit, promote configs programmatically and enable powerful integrations.
  • Segmentation
    Selective send different config values (or entirely different configs) to different audience segments.
  • AB Testing
    Rapidly AB test to your heart's content. As small as 0.1% groups. Groups can be stable across tests.
  • Version Stable Delivery
    Have different versions of your application that requires different JSON structures? We can do that out-of-the-box.
  • AI Ready
    Use Joystick for managing prompts, guardrails and more.

DevCycle features and specs

  • Feature Management
    DevCycle provides robust feature management capabilities, allowing developers to deploy and manage features effectively without deploying new code, which increases efficiency and reduces the risk of errors.
  • Real-time Analytics
    The platform offers real-time analytics, enabling teams to track how features perform and understand their impact on users immediately, facilitating data-driven decision-making.
  • User Targeting
    DevCycle supports advanced user targeting, allowing teams to segment users and roll out features to specific groups, which helps in personalized user experiences and controlled feature testing.
  • Integration Capabilities
    The solution integrates smoothly with existing development and CI/CD workflows, making it easy to incorporate into current processes without significant disruptions.
  • Scalability
    DevCycle is designed to scale efficiently with the needs of growing organizations, ensuring consistent performance regardless of the number of features being managed.

Possible disadvantages of DevCycle

  • Learning Curve
    New users might encounter a steep learning curve due to the platform's comprehensive feature set, which can require time to fully understand and utilize effectively.
  • Cost
    Depending on the scale and usage, DevCycle might become costly for smaller teams or projects with limited budgets, creating a barrier to entry for some organizations.
  • Complexity
    For less complex projects, the extensive features of DevCycle may be unnecessary and add complexity, potentially making simpler tools more attractive.
  • Dependency
    Relying heavily on a third-party feature management tool may introduce dependencies, potentially affecting flexibility and control over certain aspects of development.

Joystick videos

Instantly update your app or game.

DevCycle videos

Labs: The Evolution of Continuous Merge with DevCycle (#140)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Joystick and DevCycle)
Configuration Management
30 30%
70% 70
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Feature Flags
16 16%
84% 84
Remote Configuration
100 100%
0% 0

Questions and Answers

As answered by people managing Joystick and DevCycle.

What makes your product unique?

Joystick's answer

Joystick is easy to use yet robust with a full suite of developer-friendly features that the entire team will love. We can handle simple use cases for small projects, as well as complicated, multi-environment, team-based workflows for enterprise applications. Additionally, we do can do feature develop on request.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Joystick's answer

Remote configuration management is much more than just being able to get JSON over an API. Joystick offers a full suite of tools to support editing, environments, revision history, change management, segmentation, merging, asset management. Choose Joystick and you will discover we are probably the only platform that can grow with you through your entire product life-cycle.

What's the story behind your product?

Joystick's answer

Joystick is developed by a passionate team who used to build and operate mobile games at scale with 500k+ DAU. We know first hand how essential it is to be agile and responsive, and we built the best tool we know how to support other app and game developers out there. Please don't hesitate to reach out!

User comments

Share your experience with using Joystick and DevCycle. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Joystick and DevCycle

Joystick Reviews

  1. Ted
    · CTO at Find Recruiter ·

    A great product and super developer friendly! Suitable for developers who are looking to make their product offerings super customisable without all the hard-codings. It opens up a new way to write our software and make it more scalable than ever! 🤯

  2. David Demmer
    · CTO at Playano Education Limited ·
    Long Term user

    I have been using Joystick for many years, products and environments. If i ever had a rare problem, they immediately solved it. I absolutely love the version management as well as i can control my mobile and web apps live. Many SDK's for many different languages are available. Its a very robust infrastructure and i can absolutely recommend it. They even have a google sheets api (to transform into json), making it available for any kind of non-developer personell. Absolutely great !

    👍 Pros:    High profile robust technologies|Fast support|Easy to use|Easy integration|Safe & secure platform

DevCycle Reviews

We have no reviews of DevCycle yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, DevCycle seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Joystick mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Joystick yet. Tracking of Joystick recommendations started around May 2025.

DevCycle mentions (10)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2025)
    DevCycle | Senior/Staff Full Stack | Full-time | Toronto (Hybrid / Remote) | $150k - $180k | https://devcycle.com We are looking for a Senior-level engineer to help us build out and scale DevCycle. We are a small team that's been building in the feature flagging / AB testing space for a while (from Taplytics YC W14), supporting open standards like OpenFeature. We run a large distributed system serving trillions of... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Congrats to the DevCycle Feature Flag Challenge Winners!
    We want to give a big shout out to DevCycle for organizing this challenge with us. As many of you experienced, their platform truly makes it easy to create, rollout, and cleanup feature flags without disrupting your workflow. We are so grateful the DevCycle team decided to partner with us! - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Boost DX, Enhance UX, and Skyrocket Profits! Dive into a sub-50ms world with Edge Feature Flags 🚀
    We found the high-speed feature flag system operating on the cloud edge that we were looking for: DevCycle. The benefits of DevCycle include:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • What's so great about LaunchDarkly?
    Hey I'm biased and work for a LaunchDarkly competitor, DevCycle. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Show HN: We built an open-source LaunchDarkly alternative for B2Bs
    Welcome to the party! We launched https://devcycle.com about a year ago. We're not trying to compete in the self-hosted / on-prem space. Moreso a super simple setup and high flexibility. Your use case is interesting though, it would definitely fix a lot of headache for people trying to do this via Auth0 directly. Also this just fits in a perfect slot for people starting up a new SaaS platform for sure. Super cool. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Joystick and DevCycle, you can also consider the following products

Nedoto - Nedoto provides remote config and real-time feature flag management for your app, website or IoT.

LaunchDarkly - LaunchDarkly is a powerful development tool which allows software developers to roll out updates and new features.

Flagsmith - Flagsmith lets you manage feature flags and remote config across web, mobile and server side applications. Deliver true Continuous Integration. Get builds out faster. Control who has access to new features. We're Open Source.

ConfigCat - ConfigCat is a developer-centric feature flag service with unlimited team size, awesome support, and a reasonable price tag.

Hypertune - Type-safe feature flags, A/B testing, analytics and app configuration, with Git-style version control and local, synchronous, in-memory flag evaluation

Supabase - An open source Firebase alternative