Recommended Boards
TinyGo supports over 150 different boards — from under 3€ microcontrollers to powerful single-board computers running Linux. The full list lives on the TinyGo website. Adding support for a new board is straightforward: TinyGo’s machine package makes it easy to describe a board’s pins, peripherals, and clock settings, and the community regularly contributes new targets.
Choosing where to start can be overwhelming. So here are seven boards we genuinely recommend — selected for ease of use, quality of TinyGo support, value for money, worldwide availability, and the depth of community resources behind each one.
Adafruit Circuit Playground Express
The best all-in-one board for learning TinyGo from day one.
Adafruit is one of the most respected names in the maker world. Their documentation is exceptional, their open-source commitment is real, and years of working with teachers and beginners is evident in every design decision behind the Circuit Playground Express. It has everything built in — so you focus on learning to code, not on wiring.
What’s on board:
- 10 addressable RGB NeoPixel LEDs
- Accelerometer + gyroscope, temperature, light, and sound sensors
- Two buttons, slide switch, seven capacitive touch pads
- IR transmitter and receiver, small speaker
- USB — no external programmer needed
You can write your first TinyGo program in minutes and see LEDs react to sound, motion, or a button press without connecting a single wire. There are hundreds of community examples and Adafruit’s own learning guides are first-class.
TinyGo target: circuitplay-express · TinyGo docs ↗
Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit
Everything in the Express — now with Bluetooth.
Same compact form factor, same rich set of integrated sensors, but powered by a Nordic nRF52840 instead of the SAMD21. That means Bluetooth Low Energy built in, ready to pair with a phone, laptop, or another BLE device. The nRF52840 is also a meaningfully more capable chip — Cortex-M4F at 64 MHz with more RAM and flash — making it comfortable for projects that outgrow the Express.
If you think you might ever want wireless, skip the Express and go straight to the Bluefruit. You won’t regret it.
TinyGo target: circuitplay-bluefruit · TinyGo docs ↗
Raspberry Pi Pico
The RP2040 — our favourite chip.
We’ll be honest: we’re a little obsessed with the RP2040. It’s the chip at the heart of our own GopherBadge (which isn’t on this list only because it’s not available everywhere). For around 4€ you get a dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ at up to 133 MHz, 264 KB of RAM, and a unique programmable I/O (PIO) subsystem that can implement almost any peripheral protocol in software — I²S, DVI, step-motor control, custom serial protocols — without touching the CPU.
TinyGo’s RP2040 support is excellent. There are thousands of projects out there. This is the board we’d hand to anyone asking “what microcontroller should I learn on?”
TinyGo target: pico · TinyGo docs ↗
Raspberry Pi Pico W
The Pico with WiFi — your gateway to IoT.
Add an Infineon CYW43439 WiFi + Bluetooth combo chip and you have the Pico W, for just a couple of euros more. If your project needs to push data to a server, talk to an MQTT broker, or just fetch the time — this is the obvious choice. TinyGo’s wireless stack support for the Pico W has matured significantly and it works well in real projects.
Same RP2040 core, same PIO magic, now with wireless. Hard to beat.
TinyGo target: pico-w · TinyGo docs ↗
Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3
Remarkably small. Remarkably capable.
The XIAO series from Seeed Studio has earned a devoted following for one simple reason: they pack a lot into a very small space. The ESP32C3 is built around Espressif’s RISC-V chip with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth LE, at a price that makes it nearly disposable — often under 5€.
XIAO boards fit neatly on a breadboard, include a built-in battery management IC for easy battery-powered projects, and have castellated edges for clean SMD mounting on custom PCBs. Espressif support in TinyGo is relatively recent but solid — and the XIAO ESP32C3 is one of the best-supported entries.
TinyGo target: xiao-esp32c3 · TinyGo docs ↗
Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3
The XIAO that can run machine learning.
Same tiny, breadboard-friendly form factor as the C3, but with a significantly more powerful dual-core Xtensa LX7 running at up to 240 MHz, more RAM, and an optional camera connector on the Sense variant. This is Espressif’s flagship for edge AI/ML: it can run TensorFlow Lite models, process images or audio, and communicate over WiFi and Bluetooth — all in a board the size of a postage stamp.
If on-device machine learning is where you’re headed, this is the cheapest and smallest place to start.
TinyGo target: xiao-esp32s3 · TinyGo docs ↗
Arduino UNO Q
The Arduino that reaches a new level.
No list of this kind can leave out Arduino — it’s the platform that brought millions of people into hardware programming, and its ecosystem of shields, libraries, and tutorials is unmatched. The UNO Q takes the iconic form factor to a new level of performance: Qualcomm’s Dragonwing™ QRB2210 MPU runs a full Debian Linux OS with upstream support, while a dedicated STM32U585 MCU handles the real-time, hardware-level tasks with the responsiveness you expect from a microcontroller.
The result is a single board that spans both worlds — Linux applications and bare-metal real-time control — making it particularly powerful for edge computing and AI inference at the edge. TinyGo targets the STM32U585 for real-time tasks, while the Linux side opens the door to full Go programs running directly on the board.
The UNO form factor means compatibility with thousands of existing shields, and the brand recognition means that if you get stuck, someone has solved the same problem before.