PipeCD vs Portainer
PipeCD
pipecd.dev
Portainer
portainer.ioSide by side
| Figure | PipeCD | Portainer |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $12.92/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 7 |
| Spec score · GitOps Tools | 8.5 (#8) | 8.8 (#3) |
| API | The control plane provides gRPC connectivity for piped agents and web/API endpoints for clients. | Portainer exposes an HTTP REST API that automates UI operations and can proxy requests to underlying Docker and Kubernetes APIs. |
| Integrations | Analysis providers include Prometheus, Datadog and Stackdriver, while notifications can be sent to Slack or webhook endpoints. | The product pages identify Talos Omni integration for provisioning Kubernetes clusters and support deployment from Helm charts. |
| Self-hosting | Operators can install the control plane themselves and run piped as a Kubernetes pod, ECS container, serverless function or local process. | Portainer is deployed on customer infrastructure using Docker or Kubernetes and is designed for on-premises, cloud and disconnected edge environments. |
| Support | The project directs users to documentation, GitHub issues and discussions, and the CNCF Slack #pipecd channel for help. | The Scale plan includes 9x5 next business day support, while Enterprise offers prioritized 9x5 support with a 24/7 option. |
| What it does | PipeCD is a GitOps continuous-delivery platform intended to give one deployment and operations interface across applications and platforms. | Portainer is a self-hosted control plane that manages Docker, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Podman and Azure ACI environments through a web interface. |
Plans
Portainer
- Business Edition free tierFree
- Home & Student$155 a year
- Starter$1,045 a year
- Starter$1,045 a year
- Scale$2,095 a year
- Scale$2,095 a year
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
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.