Hopper

Hopper

Agentic dev environment for mainframes and COBOL

Contact for pricing

About Hopper

AI coding agent purpose-built for legacy mainframe and COBOL codebases — the kind of work most modern dev tools ignore. Helps banks, insurers, and government IT teams read, refactor, and modernise the COBOL that still underpins production systems, without the institutional knowledge usually required. From Hypercubic. Strong HN traction on launch (40 pts) for what is a genuinely under-served niche.

MainframeCOBOLLegacy modernisation

How Hopper compares

Hopper
Claude Code
Bolt.new
Cline
Directr tierCSSS
PriceContact for pricingFrom $20/mo or usage-basedFrom $20/moFree (pay API tokens only)
Free tierNoneNone150k tokens/dayFree
API access

Alternatives to Hopper

Claude Code
Agentic CLI coding assistant

Anthropic's CLI agent reads your entire codebase, plans multi-file changes, runs tests, and executes complex engineering tasks autonomously from the terminal. Built for engineers who want AI that understands a full project in context rather than autocompleting in isolation — agentic by design and unusually good at not breaking things. Included with Claude Pro ($20/mo) and Max ($100/mo or $200/mo) subscriptions with weekly usage allowances, or pay per token via the Anthropic API.

CLIAgenticFull-codebase
Bolt.newFree tier available
Full-stack apps from a single prompt

Build and deploy full-stack web apps from the browser by describing what you want. Bolt writes the code, installs the packages, and runs the server — no local environment required and no setup time. Strong for rapid prototyping and for non-developers who need something working fast rather than a codebase they'll be maintaining long-term.

Full-stackBrowser-basedDeploy
ClineFree
Free open-source autonomous coding agent

VS Code extension with Plan/Act modes giving fine-grained control over how autonomously the AI operates. Supports any LLM provider and costs only API tokens with no markup — with file editing, terminal access, browser use, and MCP integration built in. Five million developers and growing fast; the open-source alternative with genuine capability.

Open sourceAgenticAny LLM