The most widely used ESP8266 boards are the ESP-01, ESP8266-12E NodeMCU Kit, and the Wemos D1 Mini. For a comparison of these board, you can read this guide: ESP8266 Wi-Fi Development Boards comparison. ESP8266-
Both the ESP32 and ESP8266 are Wi-Fi development boards from Espressif systems. They can be programmed using the ESP-IDF or the Arduino IDE. The ESP8266 is inferior in terms of performance compared with the ESP32, but it is cheaper and has a smaller form factor than the ESP32. Also, ...
Moreover, the ESP8266 has also been upgraded from ESP-12 to ESP-12E (a few extra pins). This version uses the Silabs CP2102 as the USB controller. You can download the USB driver for this board at this link. NodeMCU V3 Pinout This is a version invented by Lolin with a CH340G USB...