Cloudforet vs Crossplane
Cloudforet
cloudforet.io
Crossplane
crossplane.ioSide by side
| Figure | Cloudforet | Crossplane |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Cloud Management Software | 9.0 (#4) | 7.6 (#18) |
| CLI | The cfctl command-line client supports service discovery, environment switching, token authentication and table, YAML, JSON and CSV output; binaries are documented for macOS, Linux, Windows and Docker. | The Crossplane CLI is a standalone binary; most CLI commands work without access to a Crossplane pod, though some require a Docker-compatible container runtime. |
| Deployment | The installation guide describes deployment with Minikube and says it is a developer guide, not for production. | Crossplane installs into an existing Kubernetes cluster using a Helm chart; the installation guide requires an actively supported Kubernetes version and Helm v3.2.0 or later. |
Plans
In their own words
Cloudforet
Cloudforet is an open-source platform for centralized management of public and private clouds. It is self-hosted and uses inventory collector plugins to gather assets and scan resources across connected cloud accounts. The platform lists infrastructure as code, batch remote commands and an application catalog for software such as databases and middleware. Cost features include billing analysis, resource optimization and budget management; incident tools include real-time notifications and post-mortem features. Projects and project groups organize resources, while role-based access controls user access. Cloud service plugins are listed for AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, with stated coverage also including Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Alibaba Cloud. Monitoring and notification integrations include CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud monitoring, Zabbix, Grafana, Slack, Telegram and email. Authentication options include local credentials, Google OAuth2, Active Directory and Keycloak. Cloudforet is free, with community support through GitHub Discussions. Its Minikube installation guide is for developers, not production.
Crossplane
Crossplane is a free, open-source CNCF framework for building control planes that manage cloud-native software. Its Composition feature lets teams define custom APIs with pipelines of functions instead of maintaining controllers. Managed resources are Kubernetes custom resources that can represent external services such as AWS RDS instances. Community providers cover AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab and Argo CD, among others. A package manager installs managed resources and composition functions and can distribute configurations across control planes. Crossplane installs into an existing Kubernetes cluster with a Helm chart; the guide requires an actively supported Kubernetes version and Helm v3.2.0 or later. Operations support one-time, scheduled and resource-change-triggered pipelines, but are marked alpha in Crossplane v2. The framework uses Kubernetes RBAC. Its default crossplane-admin ClusterRole has full access to secrets and namespaces and can bind roles to other entities. The project is Apache 2.0 licensed and identifies as vendor neutral.