Cisco Catalyst Center vs Octelium
Cisco Catalyst Center
cisco.comOctelium
octelium.comSide by side
| Figure | Cisco Catalyst Center | Octelium |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 2 |
| Spec score · Cloud Access Security Broker Software | 7.8 (#7) | 7.7 (#9) |
| Spec score · Zero Trust Platforms | 7.8 (#13) | 7.7 (#15) |
| Spec score · Business VPN Software | 7.1 (#83) | 7.9 (#48) |
| Deployment | Cisco describes hardware and virtual appliance deployments, including current guides for VMware ESXi and Ubuntu KVM. | Octelium runs on Kubernetes; its quick installer can provision a single-node Cluster on a fresh Linux VM or server, and larger deployments can use managed or on-premises multi-node Kubernetes. |
Plans
Cisco Catalyst Center
- Cisco DNA AdvantagePriced on request
- Cisco DNA EssentialsPriced on request
In their own words
Cisco Catalyst Center
Cisco Catalyst Center has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Octelium
Octelium is a free, open-source, self-hosted secure access platform for people, workloads, and AI agents reaching hybrid infrastructure, SaaS, and applications. It places protected resources behind identity-aware proxies and applies authorization policies at the application layer. Listed protocols and services include HTTP, gRPC, web applications, SSH, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, MySQL, RDP, DNS, SOCKS5, TCP, UDP, MCP, and LLM modes. Cluster Secrets can hold upstream credentials and inject them after authorization, avoiding credential storage by users or workloads. Identity integrations include OIDC and SAML 2.0 providers such as Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace, Keycloak, and Auth0, plus GitHub OAuth2. Native authentication includes FIDO2 and WebAuthn passkeys, TPM 2.0, and TOTP. MCP and LLM gateways govern tool calls, arguments, models, tokens, and usage records. OpenTelemetry-based logs and metrics cover layer-7 activity. Octelium runs on Kubernetes; an installer provisions a single-node Cluster on a fresh Linux server, while larger deployments use managed or on-premises multi-node Kubernetes.