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Developer Tools · head to head

Atlantis vs Delinea

Atlantis logo

Atlantis

Developer Tools

Runs Terraform plan and apply from pull request comments, self-hosted and free

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Delinea logo

Delinea

Cybersecurity

Privileged access management from the merged Thycotic and Centrify

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Atlantis has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Atlantis there is no company, no service level agreement and no paid support at any price, and the six maintainers are volunteers with day jobs, which some risk committees will not accept for a component holding production cloud credentials.; Delinea the Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • They diverge on capability: Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Delinea covers Secret Server.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Atlantis and Delinea actually diverge.

Attributes where Atlantis and Delinea differ
AttributeAtlantisDelinea
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hostedWeb, Windows, Linux, macOS
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Atlantis

  • Pull request plans
  • Comment driven apply
  • Workspace locking
  • Policy checking
  • Multi-platform webhooks
  • Custom workflows

Only in Delinea

  • Secret Server
  • Privileged session recording
  • Privilege Manager
  • Server PAM
  • Discovery
  • DevOps secrets
  • Behaviour analytics

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Atlantis

  • Making Terraform review meaningful by putting the actual plan output in front of the approvernot Delinea
  • Removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keysnot Delinea
  • Getting pull request driven infrastructure without paying a per-user subscription for a hosted platformnot Delinea
  • Enforcing Conftest policies as a blocking check before an apply can runnot Delinea

Delinea

  • An organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotatednot Atlantis
  • A mid-market IT team that abandoned a heavier PAM rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeksnot Atlantis
  • A company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incidentnot Atlantis
  • An audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractorsnot Atlantis

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Atlantis

  • There is no company, no service level agreement and no paid support at any price, and the six maintainers are volunteers with day jobs, which some risk committees will not accept for a component holding production cloud credentials.
  • The security surface is inherently sharp, because it is an internet-reachable webhook endpoint that executes applies with privileged credentials, gated by pull request comment authorisation that is coarse next to a real policy engine.
  • It is stateful, holding a working directory and lock database on local disk, so high availability and horizontal scaling are awkward and you own upgrades, webhook plumbing, secret rotation and the host itself.
  • It lacks the features that distinguish the commercial alternatives, with no native drift detection, no cost estimation, no managed state interface and no policy engine beyond the Conftest integration.
  • Terragrunt and monorepo layouts are not first-class, requiring hand-written custom workflows and repository configuration that becomes a growing maintenance burden as the number of repositories increases.

Delinea

  • The Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • Modules are licensed separately by different units, per privileged user for the vault and per endpoint for privilege management, which makes total cost hard to model and easy to underestimate at scale.
  • Delinea does not publish rates, so buyers benchmark against third party and public sector listings; expect list prices to be negotiable by a wide margin, which means the first quote is not the price.
  • Thoma Bravo ownership since 2021 has coincided with firmer renewal pricing, and buyers with a single-vendor PAM estate have little leverage once credentials are inside the vault.
  • Migrating out of a privileged access vault is a genuinely hard project because every automated process that fetches a secret has to be repointed, so the switching cost is real and the vendor knows it.

Pricing, plan by plan

Atlantis

Free
  • AtlantisFree
    • Apache-2.0, no usage limits and no seat count
    • No commercial edition and no paid support tier
    • Community support through GitHub and the CNCF Slack channel

Delinea

On request
  • Secret Server$undefined/year
    • Priced per privileged user, tiered by edition
    • Cloud or on premises deployment
    • Session recording in higher editions
  • Privilege Manager$undefined/year
    • Priced per endpoint
    • Local admin rights removal and application elevation
    • Licensed separately from Secret Server
  • Server PAM$undefined/year
    • Priced per managed server or per privileged user
    • Just-in-time server access
    • Licensed separately

Which should you pick?

Choose Atlantis if

  • You need pull request plans.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
  • You also want comment driven apply.
Atlantis review

Choose Delinea if

  • You need secret server.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
  • You also want privileged session recording.
Delinea review

Questions people ask

Is Atlantis or Delinea better?
Neither clearly leads. Atlantis starts at Free and Delinea at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Atlantis or Delinea?
Atlantis has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Atlantis and On request for Delinea.
Does Atlantis or Delinea run on more platforms?
Atlantis runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted. Delinea runs on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
Can I use Atlantis for free?
Yes. Atlantis has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Delinea starts at On request.
What is Atlantis best used for?
Atlantis is most often used for making terraform review meaningful by putting the actual plan output in front of the approver, removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keys, getting pull request driven infrastructure without paying a per-user subscription for a hosted platform, enforcing conftest policies as a blocking check before an apply can run. Of those, making terraform review meaningful by putting the actual plan output in front of the approver and removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keys are not what Delinea is typically brought in for.
What can Atlantis do that Delinea cannot?
Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Comment driven apply, Workspace locking, Policy checking. Delinea covers Secret Server, Privileged session recording, Privilege Manager, Server PAM.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Atlantis: Is there a company behind Atlantis?

No. It runs as a series of LF Projects under the Linux Foundation and is maintained by volunteers. There is no vendor to buy support from and no service level agreement.

Delinea: Is Delinea the same as Thycotic?

Delinea is the merged company formed from Thycotic and Centrify in 2021. Secret Server is the former Thycotic product; the server access products come from Centrify.

Atlantis: Is it a CNCF project?

No. It uses a channel in the CNCF Slack, which is often misread as membership, but the project sits under LF Projects rather than the CNCF.

Delinea: Is pricing published?

Not by Delinea. Public sector frameworks have listed Secret Server Cloud around 348 GBP per user per year, which is a reference point, not a quote.

Atlantis: Does it work with OpenTofu?

Yes, there is a dedicated integration guide alongside Terraform, and it also has configuration for working with hosted Terraform backends.

Delinea: Does one licence cover endpoints and servers?

No. Secret Server, Privilege Manager and Server PAM are separately licensed on different units. Scope all three if your requirement spans them.

Atlantis: What does it not do that a paid platform does?

Drift detection, cost estimation, a managed state and run interface, and a real policy engine. Atlantis does pull request plan and apply well and stops there.

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