---
id: what-is-backstage
title: What is Backstage?
# prettier-ignore
description: Backstage is an open source framework for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to your microservices and infrastructure
---
[Backstage](https://backstage.io/) is an open source framework for building developer
portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to
your microservices and infrastructure and enables your product teams to ship
high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy.
Backstage unifies all your infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation
to create a streamlined development environment from end to end.
Out of the box, Backstage includes:
- [Backstage Software Catalog](../features/software-catalog/index.md) for
managing all your software (microservices, libraries, data pipelines,
websites, ML models, etc.)
- [Backstage Software Templates](../features/software-templates/index.md) for
quickly spinning up new projects and standardizing your tooling with your
organization’s best practices
- [Backstage TechDocs](../features/techdocs/README.md) for making it easy to
create, maintain, find, and use technical documentation, using a "docs like
code" approach
- Plus, a growing ecosystem of
[open source plugins](https://github.com/backstage/backstage/tree/master/plugins)
that further expand Backstage’s customizability and functionality
## Backstage and the CNCF
Backstage is a CNCF Incubation project after graduating from Sandbox. Read the announcement
[here](https://backstage.io/blog/2022/03/16/backstage-turns-two#out-of-the-sandbox-and-into-incubation).
## Benefits
- For _engineering managers_, it allows you to maintain standards and best
practices across the organization, and can help you manage your whole tech
ecosystem, from migrations to test certification.
- For _end users_ (developers), it makes it fast and simple to build software
components in a standardized way, and it provides a central place to manage
all projects and documentation.
- For _platform engineers_, it enables extensibility and scalability by letting
you easily integrate new tools and services (via plugins), as well as
extending the functionality of existing ones.
- For _everyone_, it’s a single, consistent experience that ties all your
infrastructure tooling, resources, standards, owners, contributors, and
administrators together in one place.
If you have questions or want support, please join our
[Discord chatroom](https://discord.gg/backstage-687207715902193673).
## Benefits
- For _engineering managers_, it allows you to maintain standards and best
practices across the organization, and can help you manage your whole tech
ecosystem, from migrations to test certification.
- For _end users_ (developers), it makes it fast and simple to build software
components in a standardized way, and it provides a central place to manage
all projects and documentation.
- For _platform engineers_, it enables extensibility and scalability by letting
you easily integrate new tools and services (via plugins), as well as
extending the functionality of existing ones.
- For _everyone_, it’s a single, consistent experience that ties all your
infrastructure tooling, resources, standards, owners, contributors, and
administrators together in one place.
If you have questions or want support, please join our
[Discord chatroom](https://discord.gg/backstage-687207715902193673).