Unleash

Unleash separates deploying code from releasing a feature. A change can go to production switched off and be turned on when the team is ready, which retires the long-lived feature branch and the merge that comes with it.

Flags are evaluated by an SDK inside your application through a single function call, so the language you work in barely matters. Unleash supports 15 official client and server SDKs and more than 15 community ones, and writing your own is a documented option.

The self-hosted server covers the core of feature management, while several governance capabilities belong to the Enterprise edition.

• Flag evaluation: backend and frontend SDKs check state against the Unleash API at runtime.
• Testing in production: run new code against real production data without exposing every user to it.
• Parallel work: several features move at once without a branch per feature.
• Role-based access control: Enterprise adds rules for who may change which flags.
• Change requests: Enterprise gates flag changes behind review before they take effect.
• SSO and SCIM: Enterprise adds single sign-on and automatic user provisioning.

Getting started locally takes git and Docker. Clone the repository, bring the compose file up, and the interface answers on port 4242 with a default admin login. Running the source directly through Node.js is covered in the contributing guide.

For production, Unleash needs a persistent server, with deployment guides for Heroku and DigitalOcean and documentation on configuration options for anything more involved.