ActiveState Platform vs devenv
ActiveState Platform
docs.activestate.com
devenv
devenv.shSide by side
| Figure | ActiveState Platform | devenv |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Development Environment Managers | 9.1 (#1) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Spec score · Development Environment Management Tools | 9.1 (#1) | 8.6 (#3) |
| Integrations | The maker lists JFrog Artifactory, Sonatype Nexus, Kubernetes, Cloudera, CI/CD pipelines, IDEs, Trivy, and Wiz as integrations. | The documentation includes integrations such as direnv, SecretSpec, GitHub CI, and an MCP server for AI assistants. |
| Purpose | The Platform hosts custom runtimes whose projects define runtime components, track project history, and provide deployment instructions. | devenv lets teams declare development environments so developers and CI can use the same reproducible setup. |
| Security | The deployment documentation says packages are built and tested by ActiveState and downloads are cryptographically verified. | Projects must be explicitly trusted before auto-activation, which the documentation describes as protection against untrusted projects modifying the shell. |
| Supported systems | Projects support deployment on Windows 10/11 and Windows Server, macOS 10.15 or later on Intel and Apple Silicon, and Linux distributions with compatible glibc. | The install instructions say devenv works on Linux, macOS, and WSL after Nix is installed. |
Plans
ActiveState Platform
- Free organizationFree
- Paid organizationPriced on request
In their own words
ActiveState Platform
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.
devenv
devenv uses Nix to define development environments for teams and CI. A project configuration can specify packages, languages, services, tasks, secrets, variables, files, and shell scripts. The project lists 58 supported languages and 42 preconfigured services, including PostgreSQL, Redis, MySQL, RabbitMQ, and Elasticsearch. Processes can be supervised with dependencies and restarts, while tasks can run in parallel and integrate with shells or commits. SecretSpec can read declared secrets from sources such as Keychain, 1Password, LastPass, dotenv, and environment variables. devenv can build OCI containers and run integration tests with its processes active; documentation also describes GitHub Actions use for checks, builds, and tests. It requires Nix and works on Linux, macOS, and WSL. As of devenv 2.4, the project no longer builds, tests, or releases it for Intel Macs. Projects must be explicitly trusted before automatic activation. The software is free and MIT licensed, with GitHub and Discord linked for help and community. Cached shell startup is listed as under 100 ms after the first build; devenv Cloud is in private beta.