Aspire Samples is a browsable catalogue of runnable reference applications that demonstrate how to wire front-ends, APIs, containers, and databases together with Aspire, written for developers building distributed and polyglot applications who learn best from working code.

What it is

Aspire Samples is the official sample repository for Aspire, which its README describes as a developer-first toolset that streamlines integrating front-ends, APIs, containers, and databases with your apps. It lives in the .NET ecosystem, is written primarily in C#, and is organised as a catalogue of self-contained applications rather than a library or a framework. Each entry pairs workloads in one or more languages with an AppHost that models the composition and a deployment path. Scenarios are grouped into full-stack JavaScript and TypeScript, polyglot full-stack, backend integrations by language, and cloud, AI, and event-driven.

The concrete problem is orchestration. A React front-end, a FastAPI backend, PostgreSQL, and Redis normally require hand-written Compose files, connection strings, port wiring, and service discovery before anything runs. Aspire's AppHost replaces that manual glue, and these samples are worked examples of the replacement: Express and Redis behind YARP, FastAPI with PostgreSQL and pgAdmin, a Go Gin app built from a Dockerfile, RabbitMQ worker topologies, and an Azure Functions app alongside ASP.NET Core and Blazor. The repository is a reference to copy from, not a package to install.

Key capabilities

• JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go, and C# workloads inside one Aspire application, with the AppHost written in C# or TypeScript (aspire-with-javascript, vite-react-fastapi, polyglot-task-queue).
• Front-end integration for React, Vue, Angular, Vite, and Svelte, including Vite static assets served through YARP in both run and publish modes (vite-yarp-static).
• Reverse-proxy patterns with YARP in front of Express, FastAPI, and static front-ends (node-express-redis, aspire-with-node).
• Backend samples by language: Go with Gin and chi (container-build, golang-api), Python with FastAPI (python-fastapi-postgres), and C# APIs (vite-csharp-postgres).
• Data and messaging wiring for Redis, PostgreSQL with pgAdmin, RabbitMQ, Qdrant, and Azure Blob, Queues, and SQL (polyglot-task-queue, rag-document-qa-svelte, image-gallery).
• Observability through OpenTelemetry, demonstrated by the Node.js Weather Explorer, whose Express API instruments calls to the external Open-Meteo service (aspire-with-node).
• Custom integration authoring with ATS-generated TypeScript APIs, shown by the MailDev and MailKit sample (maildev-mailkit).

Who uses it and how

• Polyglot teams assembling one distributed app from mixed runtimes, as in the Polyglot Task Queue sample, where React and a Node API run beside Python and C# workers coordinated through RabbitMQ.
• Front-end developers who need to see how a React, Vue, or Angular application attaches to an Aspire AppHost.
• Python developers building API and AI workloads: FastAPI with PostgreSQL, a FastAPI OpenAI agent, and FastAPI with Qdrant behind a Svelte front-end for RAG document Q&A.
• Teams targeting Azure, using the Azure Functions sample that integrates Azure Functions, ASP.NET Core, and Blazor, or the Image Gallery that processes uploads through Azure Blob, Queues, and SQL.

Getting started

Browse the scenarios at https://aspire.dev/reference/samples/ and run each sample from its own directory; every sample is either run only or deployed with Docker Compose, and the Azure-targeted ones publish to Azure. The README links to Aspire's own introduction at https://aspire.dev/get-started/what-is-aspire/.

How it compares

No paid products that this project replaces are named in the facts, and no comparable tool appears in the topics or README either — YARP, Aspire, and the language runtimes are components the samples use rather than alternatives to them. It stands alone in this registry as the reference sample catalogue for Aspire.

When to use it — and when not to

Use it to learn Aspire from working code; do not depend on it as a library or treat it as production scaffolding, because it is a sample catalogue with no packaged release of its own. A self-hoster must operate whatever each sample needs — Docker Compose, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, Qdrant, or Azure services — and nothing here manages that for you. The README is a scenario index of tables rather than prose guidance, and it defers to aspire.dev for anything beyond the sample list.