ActiveState Platform vs vfox
ActiveState Platform
docs.activestate.comvfox
vfox.devSide by side
| Figure | ActiveState Platform | vfox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Development Environment Managers | 9.1 (#1) | 8.0 (#16) |
| Spec score · Development Environment Management Tools | 9.1 (#1) | 8.0 (#11) |
| Integrations | The maker lists JFrog Artifactory, Sonatype Nexus, Kubernetes, Cloudera, CI/CD pipelines, IDEs, Trivy, and Wiz as integrations. | The documentation lists community plugins for tools including Bun, Clang, CMake, Crystal, Dart, Deno, and .NET. |
| Notable limit | Docker deployment with the State Tool is currently available only for Linux containers. | The configuration guide says vfox currently supports only HTTP(S) proxy protocols. |
| Purpose | The Platform hosts custom runtimes whose projects define runtime components, track project history, and provide deployment instructions. | vfox is a cross-platform version manager for installing and switching between development runtimes and SDKs. |
| Security | The deployment documentation says packages are built and tested by ActiveState and downloads are cryptographically verified. | The multi-user guide recommends group permissions for a shared SDK directory and warns that broad 777 permissions expose it to unauthorized users. |
| What it does | The Platform hosts custom runtimes whose projects define components, track project history, and provide deployment instructions. | vfox is a cross-platform version manager for installing and switching development environments and runtime versions. |
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.
vfox
vfox is a free, Apache 2.0-licensed version manager for development runtimes and SDKs on Linux, macOS and Windows. It supports project, session and global version scopes, and can switch to a project's version when entering its directory. Teams can record tool versions in `.vfox.toml` and share that configuration. A plugin system adds support for tools and environments; its public registry includes community plugins for tools such as Bun, Clang, CMake, Crystal, Dart, Deno and .NET. Plugins that support legacy version files can read formats such as `.nvmrc`, and this capability is enabled by default. Documented shells include PowerShell, Git Bash, Bash, ZSH, Fish, CMD, Clink, Cmder and Nushell. CMD is limited to global scope and is not recommended. For Docker, CI/CD and other non-interactive shells, the documentation recommends `vfox exec` instead of shell activation hooks. The configuration guide lists support for HTTP(S) proxies only. For shared SDK storage on Linux and macOS, the guide recommends group permissions and warns against world-writable access.