VISUAL STUDIO MAGAZINE ANNOUNCES THE WINNERS OF 2026 READER’S CHOICE AWARDS

Visual Studio Magazine announced the winners of its 2026 Reader’s Choice Awards.

WOODLAND HILLS, CA, UNITED STATES, August 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Visual Studio Magazine, a digital publication covering the latest developments, tools, trends and techniques across the .NET ecosystem and a division of Converge360, today announced the winners of its 2026 Reader’s Choice Awards.

Each year, Visual Studio Magazine readers vote for the top paid third-party tools, components and services that enhance Microsoft’s Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) and support .NET development. The results reflect the choices of developers who use these products to build, test, deploy and maintain software.

“Now in their 32nd year, the Visual Studio Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards provide a useful snapshot of the tools developers are actually relying on as their workflows continue to change,” said David Ramel, Editor in Chief of Visual Studio Magazine. “AI-assisted development is getting much of the attention today, but developers still depend on a broad mix of established tools and services for everything from coding and testing to data access, deployment and application performance. Our readers’ votes offer a ground-level view of which products are earning a place in those day-to-day workflows.”

This year, readers cast their votes across 45 categories, selecting from hundreds of products. The top three vote-getters in each category earned Gold, Silver and Bronze honors.

The complete list of winners can be viewed below and at https://visualstudiomagazine.com/microsites/readers-choice-awards/2026/home.aspx.

2026 Winners
Component Suite: Desktop (WinForms, WPF)
Gold: DevExpress Universal Subscription
Silver: (TIE) Nevron Open Vision (NOV)
Silver: (TIE) Xceed Toolkit Plus for WPF
Bronze: (TIE) MindFusion WinForms Pack
Bronze: (TIE) Syncfusion Essential Studio
Bronze: (TIE) Telerik UI for WinForms

Component Suite: Web (ASP.NET, HTML5, JavaScript)
Gold: Kendo UI
Silver: Syncfusion Essential Studio
Bronze: DevExpress DevExtreme

Component Suite: Cross-Platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.)
Gold: DevExpress .NET MAUI Controls
Silver: Telerik UI for .NET MAUI
Bronze: DevExpress DataGrid

Component: Grid and Spreadsheet
Gold: DevExpress DataGrid
Silver: Telerik Kendo UI for Angular Data Grid
Bronze: MindFusion Spreadsheet for WinForms

Component: Chart, Gauge, Graph and Flow
Gold: combit List & Label
Silver: DevExpress Chart Control
Bronze: Telerik KendoReact Charts

Component: Imaging, Image Processing and Drawing
Gold: (TIE) DevExpress Theme & Skin Editor
Gold: (TIE) LEADTOOLS by Apryse Imaging Developer Toolkit
Silver: (TIE) Telerik UI for WPF ImageEditor
Silver: (TIE) Six Labors ImageSharp
Silver: (TIE) Syncfusion Image Editor

Component: Mapping/GIS
Gold: DevExpress Map Control
Silver: ArcGIS Maps SDK for .NET
Bronze: (TIE) Syncfusion Maps
Bronze: (TIE) Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core Map

Component: Text, OCR, Scanning & Barcode
Gold: (TIE) DevExpress Rich Text Editor
Gold: (TIE) Telerik UI for WinForms RichTextEditor
Silver: Syncfusion DOCX Editor
Bronze: LEADTOOLS by Apryse Barcode SDK

Component: UI, Toolbar, Menu, Ribbon
Gold: DevExpress Ribbon, Toolbars and Menus
Silver: Telerik UI for WinForms RibbonBar
Bronze: Syncfusion Ribbon

Component: Multi-Document Processing
Gold: DevExpress Office & PDF File API
Silver: Syncfusion Essential Studio Document SDK
Bronze: Aspose.Total for .NET

Blazor Components and Tools
Gold: DevExpress Blazor UI
Silver: (TIE) Infragistics Ignite UI for Blazor
Silver: (TIE) Telerik UI for Blazor
Bronze: (TIE) jQWidgets Smart UI for Blazor
Bronze: (TIE) Nevron Open Vision for .NET
Bronze: (TIE) Syncfusion Blazor UI components

Software Design, Frameworks, and Modeling Tools
Gold: DevExpress eXpressApp Framework
Silver: Metalama by PostSharp
Bronze: Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Performance, Profiling, and Debugging Tools
Gold: (TIE) Datadog for Visual Studio
Gold: (TIE) JetBrains dotTrace
Silver: (TIE) Redgate Monitor
Silver: (TIE) Redgate .NET Developer Bundle

General Development Tools (includes IDEs)
Gold: JetBrains ReSharper
Silver: Postman
Bronze: (TIE) Gizmox Visual WebGui DevTools
Bronze: (TIE) Syncfusion Code Studio

Agentic AI Tools, AI-Assisted App Dev Tools
Gold: Infragistics Ignite UI CLI MCP
Silver: Qodo
Bronze: Sourcegraph Cody

Collaboration, Project Management and Agile Solutions
Gold: Atlassian Jira
Silver: GitLab
Bronze: VisualSVN Server

ALM, SCM and Requirements Management
Gold: Modern Requirements4DevOps
Silver: VisualSVN Server
Bronze: TechExcel DevSuite

BI, Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) & BI Development Studio
Gold: DevExpress BI Dashboard
Silver: Reveal Embedded Analytics
Bronze: SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio

Bug, Defect and Feature Tracking
Gold: Atlassian Jira
Silver: Sentry
Bronze: Asana

Software Architecture
Gold: Visual Paradigm
Silver: Lucidchart
Bronze: Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Software Testing and Quality Assurance
Gold: Postman
Silver: Ranorex Studio
Bronze: DevExpress TestCafe Studio

FTP, Email and Network Connectivity
Gold: SolarWinds Serv-U File Transfer Protocol Server
Silver: Aspose.Email for .NET
Bronze: Xceed SFTP for .NET

Reporting, Analysis and Visualization
Gold: combit List & Label
Silver: DevExpress Reports
Bronze: SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio

Databases, Data Development and Modeling
Gold: DevExpress XPO
Silver: (TIE) Redgate Flyway
Silver: (TIE) Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
Silver: (TIE) Snowflake Connector for .NET
Bronze: RavenDB

SharePoint Components and Tooling
Gold: (TIE) Bamboo Solutions Project Management Central
Gold: (TIE) Nevron SharePoint Vision
Gold: (TIE) Lightning Tools Forms Designer
Silver: (TIE) ArcGIS for SharePoint
Silver: (TIE) Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor

PDF and Print/Preview Components and Tools
Gold: DevExpress PDF Viewer & API
Silver: (TIE) Aspose.PDF for .NET
Silver: (TIE) Syncfusion Essential Studio Document SDK
Silver: (TIE) Telerik UI for WPF PDF Viewer
Bronze: Xceed PDF for .NET

Mobile Development Tools and Frameworks
Gold: DevExpress .NET MAUI Controls
Silver: Telerik UI for .NET MAUI
Bronze: Arm Mobile Studio

Game Engine Development Tools and SDKs
Gold: Cesium for Unreal
Silver: Cesium for Unity
Bronze: Esri ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unity

Middleware, SOA and Server-Based Tools
Gold: Confluent.Kafka for .NET
Silver: CData ADO.NET Providers
Bronze: (TIE) MESCIUS Document Solutions
Bronze: (TIE) ScaleOut StateServer

Internet of Things
Gold: Meadow by Wilderness Labs
Silver: GHI Electronics TinyCLR OS
Bronze: /n software IPWorks IoT

Web Design & Development Tools and Frameworks
Gold: DevExpress React Components
Silver: Syncfusion Blazor UI components
Bronze: (TIE) Infragistics Ignite UI for React
Bronze: (TIE) UnoPlatform

Productivity Tools
Gold: DevExpress CodeRush for Visual Studio
Silver: SonarQube
Bronze: Infragistics App Builder

Content Management Systems
Gold: (TIE) Kentico Xperience
Gold: (TIE) Optimizely CMS
Gold: (TIE) Progress Sitefinity
Silver: Umbraco CMS
Bronze: DNN Evoq

Cloud Development Tools
Gold: VMware Cloud Foundation
Silver: OpenText Core Developer
Bronze: CloudMonix

Security & Copy Protection
Gold: DevExpress .NET App Security and Web API Service
Silver: Novalys Visual Guard
Bronze: Quest Code Protector for .NET

Installation, Setup & Deployment Tools
Gold: InstallAware for Windows Installer
Silver: Redgate Flyway
Bronze: Octopus Deploy

Parallel and Multicore Development Tools
Gold: (TIE) NVIDIA Nsight Visual Studio Edition
Gold: (TIE) Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit
Silver: Intel oneAPI HPC Toolkit

Web Hosting
Gold: GoDaddy Hosting
Silver: IONOS Web Hosting
Bronze: Bluehost

Help Authoring
Gold: Adobe RoboHelp
Silver: HelpSmith
Bronze: Innovasys HelpStudio

DevOps
Gold: Postman
Silver: Micro Focus Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio
Bronze: Dynatrace

Developer Training Resources
Gold: (TIE) Coursera
Gold: (TIE) Pluralsight
Silver: Udemy Business
Bronze: LinkedIn Learning

Specialized Search Engines
Gold: Elasticsearch
Silver: Open Semantic Sear
Bronze: dtSearch Engine

Containers & Docker
Gold: Docker Desktop
Silver: (TIE) Portainer
Silver: (TIE) Amazon Elastic Container
Silver: (TIE) Google Kubernetes
Silver: (TIE) Red Hat OpenShift

AI/Cognitive Services/Machine Learning
Gold: (TIE) Cohere .NET
Gold: (TIE) Syncfusion Code Studio
Silver: (TIE) Dataiku
Silver: (TIE) Google Keras
Silver: (TIE) Caffe
Silver: (TIE) Wyn Enterprise

Software Development Service Providers
Gold: Telerik App Development Services
Silver: ScienceSoft
Bronze: Inoxoft
Information on the 2026 Reader’s Choice Awards will be available at visualstudiomagazine.com next year.

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About Converge360
For more than two decades, our readers have trusted our B2B industry insights and expert editorial voice in the areas of education, enterprise IT and development, safety, security and the channel. We bring our clients top-quality programs tailored to meet the nuanced needs of their businesses and connect them with the high-level, experienced professionals they want to reach.

About Visual Studio Magazine
Visual Studio Magazine is focused on providing developers with news and changes to the .NET-centric development space and timely and practical real-world solutions to problems that have a direct impact on their company’s bottom line.

Mallory Bastionell
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