Dagger vs Tilt

Dagger is a software stack for continuous integration built around an API, executable code, and a portable DAG execution engine. Pipeline logic can run locally or in Dagger Cloud, with automatic caching and end-to-end tracing. Cloud Checks connect a GitHub repository to Dagger Cloud and run checks on Cloud Engines after events such as pushes or pull requests, without a CI workflow file. Official modules cover testing, linting, formatting, type checking, browser tests, and Helm chart validation, and can be extended in a user's preferred language. The CLI has installation instructions for macOS, Linux, and Windows, and the documentation includes a self-hosting guide. Individual is free and allows one user, 1,000,000 monthly events, one month of run history, and community support. Team costs $50 a month after a two-week trial, for up to 10 users, 10,000,000 monthly events, one year of run history, and email support. Enterprise pricing is custom; SSO and managed single-tenant deployment are contact items. The site links to security and compliance information.

Tilt is a free, open-source development environment for teams building microservice applications that deploy to Kubernetes. It watches files, builds container images and updates the development environment when code changes. Its live_update feature deploys changes to running containers in seconds, including compiled-language code or dependency changes. Tilt can start the application and automate rebuilds, with logs, broken builds and runtime errors in its feedback loop. Its UI collects service logs and shows the development environment's state.

Teams configure services and workflows with Tiltfiles using Kubernetes YAML and Docker images; documentation also describes integrating Bazel builds. Tilt has an extension system for sharing Tiltfile functionality, such as team scripts and custom buttons, and provides editor support for VS Code, selected JetBrains IDEs and other editors through an embedded language server. It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows. The standard setup requires Docker, kubectl and a local Kubernetes cluster, though workflows can also use options such as Helm, Podman or local processes. Tilt is maintained as open source by Docker, Inc. under the Apache-2.0 license and costs nothing.