Flagger vs PipeCD
Flagger
flagger.app
PipeCD
pipecd.devSide by side
| Figure | Flagger | PipeCD |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Progressive Delivery Software | 8.2 (#11) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Deployment Tools | 8.1 (#11) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Spec score · Continuous Delivery Software | 8.0 (#15) | 8.3 (#13) |
| License | Flagger is licensed under Apache 2.0. | PipeCD is released as open source under Apache License 2.0. |
| Notifications | It can send deployment and canary result notifications to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and Rocket. | Deployment notifications can be sent to Slack and webhook endpoints. |
| Product | Flagger is a progressive delivery Kubernetes operator that automates application releases on Kubernetes. | PipeCD is a GitOps-style continuous delivery platform for consistent deployment and operations across applications. |
| Project status | Flagger is a graduated Cloud Native Computing Foundation project and part of the Flux family of GitOps tools. | PipeCD is released as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. |
| Support | The project directs users to its documentation, the CNCF community Slack #flagger channel, Flux talks, and GitHub issues for help. | The project directs users to documentation, GitHub issues and discussions, and the CNCF Slack #pipecd channel for help. |
Plans
In their own words
Flagger
Flagger is a self-hosted Kubernetes operator that automates progressive delivery for applications running on Kubernetes. It gradually shifts traffic to a new version while checking measures such as HTTP or gRPC request success and latency. Deployment approaches include canary releases, A/B testing, and blue/green deployments, routed through an ingress controller or a service mesh compatible with the Kubernetes Gateway API. Built-in checks cover HTTP request success rate and duration; teams can add custom metrics and webhooks for acceptance tests, load tests, or other validation. Release analysis can query systems including Prometheus, Datadog, CloudWatch, New Relic, Graphite, Dynatrace, InfluxDB, and Google Cloud Monitoring. If SLO analysis detects a performance drop, Flagger rolls back the release automatically. Manual controls allow approval, pausing, or resuming deployments, and notifications can go to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, or Rocket. It is configured through Kubernetes custom resources, works with Kubernetes-compatible CI/CD solutions, and can be used with Flux for GitOps canary pipelines. Flagger is Apache 2.0 licensed and free.
PipeCD
PipeCD is a self-hosted continuous delivery platform that coordinates deployments through Git pull requests. Its shared deployment interface supports Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP Cloud Run, AWS Lambda, AWS ECS and other targets, while plugins let teams add custom applications or platforms. PipeCD says deployment setup needs a pipeline definition and application manifests, without changes to CRDs or application manifests. Built-in analysis assesses deployment impact with metrics, logs and emitted requests; the platform can roll back after analysis or pipeline-stage failures, detect configuration drift and launch deployments from defined events. Its UI presents deployment pipelines, per-deployment logs, live application state and delivery-performance insights. A centralized Control Plane works with piped agents that run deployments using plugin binaries. Security features include single sign-on and role-based access control, and credentials stay outside the Control Plane. PipeCD is open source under Apache 2.0 and costs nothing. For private Git repositories, piped needs a private SSH key and its corresponding public key added to the repository.