Devbox vs GHCup
Devbox
jetify.comGHCup
haskell.orgSide by side
| Figure | Devbox | GHCup |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Development Environment Managers | 8.5 (#6) | 8.5 (#7) |
| Configuration | A devbox.json file defines project packages, scripts, services, and environment configuration. | GHCup configuration can be placed in ~/.ghcup/config.yaml, and command-line options override configuration file settings. |
| Security | Jetify Cloud is described as SOC-2 certified and supports SSO for access management. | The installation instructions use HTTPS with TLS 1.2 or later for the Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and WSL2 bootstrap command. |
Plans
Devbox
- Solo$5 a month
- Starter$25 a month
- Scale-up$250 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Devbox
Devbox is an open-source command-line tool for creating isolated development shells from declared package lists. A project’s devbox.json can define packages, scripts, services, and environment configuration, drawing on a searchable Nix-powered catalog with over 400,000 versions of 80,000 packages. One definition can produce a local shell, a VS Code devcontainer, a Dockerfile, or a remote cloud development environment. Devbox can orchestrate project services with process-compose without Docker; Docker is needed only for container creation. The GitHub Action installs Devbox and can cache the Nix store in workflows, and documented integrations include direnv and a Visual Studio Code extension. Installation guidance lists Linux, macOS, and Windows through WSL2, and Devbox requires the Nix Package Manager. Jetify offers cloud and secrets services alongside the tool.
GHCup
GHCup is a free, open-source installer and version manager for the Haskell toolchain. It installs and manages GHC, cabal-install, Haskell Language Server (HLS), and Stack versions; Stack can also be configured to use GHC versions managed by GHCup. Listed functionality includes a terminal user interface and GHC cross-compilation. Installation guidance covers terminal commands for Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and WSL2, alongside PowerShell instructions for Windows. The project describes Windows support as being in an early stage and uses a shim wrapper because Windows does not properly support symbolic links. On macOS, GHCup may prompt for command line tools; Windows setup includes msys2. The installer should be run as a non-root user on Unix-like systems and a non-admin user on Windows. GHCup relies on precompiled binaries, so compatibility can depend on the distribution and libraries such as libtinfo. WSL1 and macOS versions earlier than 10.13 are unsupported. Some ARM binaries are experimental: Stack and HLS on Linux ARM, and HLS bindists on macOS aarch64. Configuration can be stored in ~/.ghcup/config.yaml, with command-line options taking precedence.