Chaos Toolkit vs Gremlin
Chaos Toolkit
chaostoolkit.org
Gremlin
gremlin.comSide by side
| Figure | Chaos Toolkit | Gremlin |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $3,750/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 8 |
| Spec score · Chaos Engineering Platforms | 8.8 (#3) | 9.0 (#1) |
| Integrations | The extension directory lists integrations including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Kafka, Slack, Datadog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry and Prometheus. | Documented integrations include AWS, Azure, GCP, Jira and configurable REST webhooks. |
| License | The software is released under the Apache-2.0 license. | Gremlin's commercial reliability platform is not offered as an open-source product; a G2 reviewer specifically notes that no open-source version is available. |
| Purpose | Chaos Toolkit is a chaos engineering toolkit for developers to explore and test systems to discover weaknesses. | Gremlin helps engineering teams find failure modes, fix them, and validate reliability before failures become outages. |
| Self-hosting | The standalone toolkit runs locally or in user-managed environments, while the separate Reliably product provides hosted and private deployment options. | Private Edition provides an isolated self-hosted deployment for organizations that cannot use the SaaS service. |
| What it does | Chaos Toolkit is a command-line tool for defining and running controlled chaos-engineering experiments against infrastructure and applications. | Gremlin is a reliability platform that injects controlled failures and tests systems before incidents affect users. |
Plans
Gremlin
- Gremlin 30-day trialFree
- Gremlin Platform trialFree
- Gremlin Reliability Management Platform on AWS Marketplace$45,000 a year
- Fault injection suitePriced on request
- Fault injection suite (stand-alone)Priced on request
- Gremlin Foresight AIPriced on request
- Gremlin PlatformPriced on request
- Professional ServicesPriced on request
In their own words
Chaos Toolkit
Chaos Toolkit is a free, open-source chaos engineering toolkit for developers exploring systems to uncover weaknesses. Experiments define a steady-state hypothesis and probes to check it, along with a method of actions and probes. If the system does not meet the stated steady state, the method is not applied and the experiment must stop. Experiments can be declared in JSON or YAML files, making them suitable for collaboration and orchestration alongside code. The toolkit extends to systems through its Open API and can be embedded in a CI/CD chain. Listed integrations include AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Kafka, Slack, Datadog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and Prometheus. The standalone CLI is available under Apache License 2.0. It is implemented in Python 3, officially supports Python 3.8 and later, and has only been tested against CPython. Installation instructions cover macOS, Debian or Ubuntu, and Windows; users can install extensions after the CLI and core library. Reliably is a separate platform with SaaS, private SaaS, and on-premises options.
Gremlin
Gremlin is a chaos engineering platform for engineering teams seeking failure modes and ways to validate reliability before failures become outages. It injects faults into services, hosts, containers, and serverless workloads so teams can examine system responses. Blast radius controls limit experiments, which can halt and roll back automatically if issues arise. Teams can sequence experiments into incident scenarios, schedule them, and use GameDay Manager to prepare, run, analyze, and store results. The platform also includes dependency discovery, standardized test suites and reliability scores, disaster recovery testing, detected risks, and organization-wide benchmarking. Documented integrations include Slack, Datadog, Dynatrace, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Grafana Cloud k6, Jira, and custom webhooks. Supported environments include public clouds, Linux, Windows, Kubernetes, and on-premises deployments through self-hosted Private Edition. Gremlin states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified and encrypts data in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256. A 30-day trial is available without a credit card and does not auto-convert. Platform pricing is by custom quote per service; agents, targets, and test volume are sized during the pricing conversation.