EC2 Image Builder vs Garden
EC2 Image Builder
aws.amazon.com
Garden
garden.ioSide by side
| Figure | EC2 Image Builder | Garden |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $50/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Container Build Tools | 7.6 (#19) | 9.1 (#3) |
| Purpose | EC2 Image Builder automates customization, testing, distribution, and lifecycle management of Amazon Machine Images and container images. | Garden is a DevOps automation tool for developing and testing Kubernetes apps faster. |
| Supported operating systems | Supported image operating systems include Amazon Linux, CentOS, macOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Ubuntu, and Windows Server. | Official installation instructions cover macOS, Windows 10 or later, and Linux. |
Plans
In their own words
EC2 Image Builder
EC2 Image Builder has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Garden
Garden is a DevOps automation tool for developing and testing Kubernetes applications. It creates production-like environments for development, testing, and CI on demand, then represents infrastructure, builds, services, and tests in a dependency-aware action graph. Graph-aware caching avoids rerunning unchanged images and tests. Garden Core uses YAML declarations to make workflows reproducible across developer machines and CI, and sync mode live-syncs changes to running deployments. Plugins cover Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Pulumi, and local scripts. Its Terraform provider validates and provisions infrastructure and exposes stack outputs to Garden actions; the Pulumi plugin is experimental and deploys stacks in dependency order. Garden Cloud's Remote Container Builder uses managed remote compute and shared Docker layer caches. Garden supports Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use. It requires Git 2.14 or newer, and local service builds need a local Kubernetes installation. The free tier has limits on build minutes, cache hits, and cache retention. Enterprise is a self-hosted Garden Cloud distribution installed into a customer's Kubernetes infrastructure.