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Hardware board chooser

Tick what your project needs (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, low power, Linux, many pins, 5 V logic and more) and get a ranked list of popular boards with reasons, plus a comparison chart, a language and IDE guide and a pin-voltage warning.

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Pin voltage: read this before wiring. Most modern boards (ESP8266, ESP32, Raspberry Pi and Pico, STM32, Teensy, micro:bit, BeagleBone, Arduino Nano ESP32 and Uno R4 WiFi's ESP32 side) use 3.3 V logic and their pins are not 5 V tolerant. Connecting a 5 V output (for example from an Arduino Uno, a 5 V sensor or a 5 V serial adapter) directly to such a pin can damage the board. Use a level shifter, a resistor divider (for slow signals), or a 3.3 V version of the sensor. Pins also have current limits (often only a few to about 20 mA each): never drive a motor, relay or long LED strip straight from a pin. Some boards have exceptions (specific 5 V tolerant pins, or analog inputs limited to 1 V or 1.8 V, such as the ESP8266's raw ADC pin and BeagleBone's analog inputs): always verify in the maker's documentation.

Tick what you need

Items marked "must" remove boards that cannot do it; the others add points for boards that do it well. Ratings are a rough guide from general knowledge of each family, not benchmarks. Everything runs in this page.

Your ranked list

Which language or IDE?

Tool	Good for	Notes
Arduino IDE (C/C++)	Arduino boards, and many ESP32, ESP8266, RP2040 and Teensy boards via board packages	Easiest start for most people; huge library collection; Windows, macOS, Linux
MicroPython	ESP32, ESP8266, Pico / Pico W / Pico 2, STM32, micro:bit	Type code and run it, no compile step; good for learning; slower and uses more memory than C. Thonny is a beginner-friendly editor for it
CircuitPython	Adafruit and many other boards, Pico, some ESP32	Board appears as a USB drive and you edit code.py; good library of ready drivers
PlatformIO	Almost every microcontroller; a professional-style setup inside VS Code	Better project and library management than the Arduino IDE; steeper to start
Vendor C/C++ SDK (Pico SDK, ESP-IDF, STM32Cube)	Full control and best performance	Use when you outgrow Arduino-style libraries
Linux (Python, C, anything)	Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, Jetson	A real computer: files, network, cameras, many languages; not hard real-time
MakeCode (blocks)	micro:bit	Drag-and-drop blocks in the browser, also JavaScript and Python

Comparison chart

Numbers are typical or ranges for the common boards; variants differ. "Verify on the maker's page" before you buy: flash, RAM, wireless and pin counts depend on the exact model. No prices are shown on purpose.

Board	Chip	CPU / clock	RAM / flash	Logic	Wireless	GPIO	OS?	Languages / IDEs	Best for	Beginner	Cautions

Beginner friendliness: 3 = easiest to start, 1 = needs more experience. "Adafruit / SparkFun-style" boards are listed generically because the chips and specs vary board to board.

Further reading: Your first microcontroller project (guide), Circuit cookbook, Electronics calculators, Electronics cheat sheet. Last checked November 2026.