Anvil vs Eric

Anvil is an online IDE for building and deploying full-stack web apps with Python. It pairs a drag-and-drop interface designer with client-side and server-side Python, and includes Data Tables, a built-in database backed by Postgres. Apps can be published to Anvil hosting or exported to run on the open-source Anvil App Server. Developers can create HTTP APIs and connect external Python code through Uplink. Built-in user authentication and app email support cover sending and receiving messages. Anvil documentation lists integrations for Google, Microsoft Entra ID, Facebook, Stripe and Tableau, and says Python SDKs can connect other services. Apps adapt to phones and tablets; the FAQ describes them as installable Progressive Web Apps for Android, iPhone and Chromebook, with offline operation. The Free plan includes unlimited apps and cloud hosting, but provides 50,000 Data Table rows and 100 MB of Data Table storage. Anvil says its hosted infrastructure is in London on AWS eu-west-2. It also says its API removes common flaws such as injection, XSS and CSRF.

Eric is a Python editor and IDE based on Qt and Scintilla, intended for quick edits as well as project management. Its current stable version, eric7, is based on PyQt6, Qt6 and Python 3. Editing tools include syntax highlighting, autocompletion, calltips, source folding, brace matching, error highlighting and project-wide search and replace. For development, it includes a Python debugger with multi-thread and multiprocessing support, profiling, code coverage, code checking, task management and unittest support. Core plugins provide interfaces for Mercurial, Subversion and Git repositories, and users can load further extensions from its Plugin Repository. Python tools include pip and virtual environment management and an interactive shell; rope refactoring is available as an optional plugin. Eric also lists chat and a shared editor as cooperation functions. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and can be installed through PyPI or a distribution archive. The maker recommends installation in a Python virtual environment, and directs Windows users to a ZIP archive. It is free, with no price or usage limits stated.