Garden vs kpack
Garden
garden.iokpack
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Garden | kpack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Build Tools | 9.1 (#3) | 7.4 (#23) |
| Caching | Garden uses graph-aware caching so unchanged images and tests do not run again. | Image resources support volume-based or registry-based build caching. |
| Integrations | Garden provides plugins for Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Pulumi and local scripts. | The documentation includes examples for Docker Hub, Google Container Registry, and GitHub credentials. |
| License | The Garden repository is open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. | The repository identifies its license as Apache-2.0. |
| Purpose | Garden is a DevOps automation tool for developing and testing Kubernetes apps faster. | kpack is a Kubernetes native container build service that builds OCI images using Cloud Native Buildpacks. |
| Support | Garden directs users to Garden Discussions and its GitHub repository for help and issue reporting. | The project README points users to a weekly working group and the CNCF Slack community. |
Plans
In their own words
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.