ActiveState Platform vs Astral

ActiveState Platform hosts custom runtimes assembled from source. Projects specify runtime components, preserve project history and provide deployment instructions; their artifacts may include packages, dependencies, patches and bundles, but not contributors’ first-party code. Create projects in the web interface or with the State Tool CLI, then deploy and activate them locally. Projects can remain personal, be shared with an organization or be public. The platform supports Windows, macOS and Linux deployments, and its GraphQL API can build open-source software for different operating systems and languages without requiring users to manage build infrastructure. It provides immutable SBOMs in SPDX formats and describes build safeguards including reproducible builds, checksum checks and isolated containers. A free organization plan costs nothing and is limited to public projects. Curated Catalog annual pricing is $25,000 for fewer than 100 employees, $50,000 for 100–999 employees and $150,000 for 1,000 or more; those prices do not apply to legacy Platform subscriptions.

Astral makes open-source tools for Python development, including Ruff, a linter, and uv, a package and project manager. Both are written in Rust. uv brings together project management, a universal lockfile, script execution, Python version management, tool installation, workspaces and a pip-compatible interface. Astral describes that interface as providing a 10–100x speedup over pip. uv supports macOS, Linux and Windows. Its documented integrations include Docker, Jupyter, marimo, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, pre-commit, PyTorch, FastAPI, Bazel, artifact registries, Renovate, Dependabot, AWS Lambda and Coiled. Astral says its tools are permissively licensed and free forever. It describes security controls for workflows and releases, including read-only default workflow permissions, full-length commit-SHA pinning, Trusted Publishing, Sigstore attestations and immutable GitHub releases. Documentation directs users to its Discord community for support. The separate pyx package registry offers optimized installs and other package-management features, but is no longer accepting new signups. Astral has announced an agreement to join OpenAI as part of the Codex team.