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Developer Tools · head to head

Atlantis vs Nebula

Atlantis logo

Atlantis

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Nebula logo

Nebula

Networking

Certificate based overlay network from Slack, with identity and firewall rules carried in the certificate

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • 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.; Nebula the open source project has no user interface, no enrolment workflow and no revocation service, so certificate issuing, distribution and expiry become scripts you write and then have to keep working.
  • They diverge on capability: Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Nebula covers Certificate carried identity.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Atlantis and Nebula actually diverge.

Attributes where Atlantis and Nebula differ
AttributeAtlantisNebula
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hostedLinux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, FreeBSD
CategoryDeveloper ToolsNetworking

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), free tier (Yes), 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 Nebula

  • Certificate carried identity
  • Group based host firewall
  • Lighthouse discovery
  • Noise protocol encryption
  • Unsafe routes
  • Managed option

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 Nebula
  • Removing local applies and the credential sprawl that comes with every engineer holding production keysnot Nebula
  • Getting pull request driven infrastructure without paying a per-user subscription for a hosted platformnot Nebula
  • Enforcing Conftest policies as a blocking check before an apply can runnot Nebula

Nebula

  • Flattening a network across several clouds and datacentres without VPC peering or route tablesnot Atlantis
  • Very large fleets where a central policy service on the connection path is unacceptablenot Atlantis
  • Environments that already run an internal certificate authority and want the network to use itnot Atlantis
  • Replacing per host iptables rules with policy written against roles that follow the hostnot 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.

Nebula

  • The open source project has no user interface, no enrolment workflow and no revocation service, so certificate issuing, distribution and expiry become scripts you write and then have to keep working.
  • Revoking a compromised host means distributing a blocklist entry to every other host and reloading them, which is a fleet wide operation rather than a click, and easy to get wrong under pressure.
  • Changing a host group membership means reissuing and redeploying its certificate, so policy changes are a deployment rather than a configuration edit.
  • There is no identity provider integration or single sign on in the open source version, so it maps well to servers and badly to a fleet of user laptops.
  • NAT traversal is best effort and hosts behind symmetric NAT need a relay configured deliberately, so connectivity failures show up as intermittent rather than immediate and are awkward to diagnose.

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

Nebula

Free
  • NebulaFree
    • Full functionality under the MIT licence
    • No host limit
    • You operate the certificate authority and lighthouses
  • Defined Networking$undefined/month
    • Hosted control plane and enrolment
    • Managed certificate lifecycle and revocation
    • Policy and DNS interface

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 Nebula if

  • You need certificate carried identity.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, FreeBSD.
  • You also want group based host firewall.
Nebula review

Questions people ask

Is Atlantis or Nebula better?
Neither clearly leads. Atlantis starts at Free and Nebula at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Atlantis or Nebula?
Atlantis starts at Free and Nebula at Free.
Does Atlantis or Nebula run on more platforms?
Atlantis runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted. Nebula runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, FreeBSD.
Can I use Atlantis for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
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 Nebula is typically brought in for.
What can Atlantis do that Nebula cannot?
Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Comment driven apply, Workspace locking, Policy checking. Nebula covers Certificate carried identity, Group based host firewall, Lighthouse discovery, Noise protocol encryption.

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.

Nebula: Does it use WireGuard?

No. Nebula predates the common WireGuard mesh tools and uses the Noise protocol framework with its own certificate format.

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.

Nebula: Can I run it without Defined Networking?

Yes, entirely. Defined Networking sells the control plane conveniences, not the network itself.

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.

Nebula: How do I revoke a host?

Add its certificate fingerprint to the blocklist in the configuration of the other hosts and reload them. There is no online revocation check.

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.

Nebula: Is it a good fit for laptops?

Less so than the identity provider based tools. There is no single sign on, so every laptop needs a certificate issued and renewed by whatever process you build.

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