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Chef InSpec vs Fairwinds Polaris

Chef InSpec

chef.io

Fairwinds Polaris

fairwinds.com

Side by side

FigureChef InSpecFairwinds Polaris
Price from—Free
Free plan—Yes
Free trial——
Open source——
Web—Yes
WindowsYesYes
macOSYesYes
LinuxYesYes
Self-hosted—Yes
Plans published01
Spec score · Infrastructure Policy as Code Tools6.2 (#22)8.8 (#2)
Founded19812015
HeadquartersBurlington, Massachusetts, United StatesArlington, Massachusetts, United States

Plans

Chef InSpec

No plans published.

Chef InSpec pricing →

Fairwinds Polaris

  • Polaris (Open Source)Free

Fairwinds Polaris pricing →

In their own words

Chef InSpec

Chef InSpec has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

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Fairwinds Polaris

Fairwinds Polaris is an open source policy engine for validating and remediating Kubernetes resource configuration. It includes more than 30 built-in policies, and teams can add their own using JSON Schema. Checks cover security practices such as least privilege, privilege escalation, root execution, and host IPC or PID settings, along with resource requests and limits, readiness and liveness probes, and image tags. Polaris can run as a dashboard, an admission controller, or a command-line tool for checking local YAML files in CI/CD. Its validating webhook rejects workloads that trigger danger-level checks; warning-level findings pass and appear in the dashboard or webhook logs. A mutating webhook or command-line run can automatically remediate supported issues, including missing limits and probes and some unsafe security settings. The dashboard can audit local files or connect to a live cluster, and can be installed with kubectl or Helm. The validating webhook requires a valid TLS certificate. Polaris is free and runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, web, and self-hosted environments.

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