Cachix vs JFrog Artifactory

Cachix hosts Nix binary caches so teams can share binaries across CI, development, and deployment environments. Its CLI can push binaries, watch a Nix store, and configure Nix to use a cache. The service says its optimizations speed up cache roundtrips, while Cloudflare CDN provides performance and unlimited bandwidth on all plans. When a cache reaches its storage limit, least-recently-used entries are removed; Cachix says it sends a warning email at 85% of that limit. Documentation includes CI guides for GitHub Actions, Buildkite, CircleCI, GitLab CI, Hercules CI, Hydra, and Travis CI. Cachix Deploy uses a pull model to deploy continuously to Nix profiles such as NixOS, nix-darwin, and Home Manager. Teams can assign read or write access, revoke tokens, and require a token for private cache reads and writes; cache entries are signed. Enterprise options include on-premise or self-hosted deployment, SSO, SLA, dedicated premium support, custom deployment, and audit logs. Cachix offers a free plan and a 14-day trial. Listed Starter, Standard, and Pro plans have prices available by contacting Cachix.

JFrog Artifactory manages binaries, packages, containers, releases, AI/ML models, and agent assets as a system of record. It supports more than 40 software build package types, including Docker, Maven, and Gradle, and can serve as a Docker and Kubernetes registry for containers and Helm charts. CLI and REST APIs, Open API specifications, and Artifactory Query Language support automation and searches. Artifactory can run as SaaS or self-managed software, with installation options including Helm, Docker, RPM, Debian, Linux archive, and Windows archive. Integrations include GitHub, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Terraform, and Slack, among others. Storage options include S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Filestore Sharding; active/active high availability includes live failover and non-disruptive production upgrades. Security controls include granular permissions and external authentication such as LDAP or SAML. The free self-managed Container Registry edition is limited to Docker, OCI, Helm, Helm OCI, and Generic workflows. A 14-day trial is available without a credit card. Pro costs $50 a month, with consumption-based pricing beyond the 25 GB base; self-managed plans start at $27,000 a year.