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Developer Tools · head to head

Atlantis vs Restate

Atlantis logo

Atlantis

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Restate logo

Restate

Developer Tools

Durable execution engine in Rust with a free tier and low-latency workflows

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.; Restate the runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • They diverge on capability: Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Restate covers Durable execution.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Atlantis and Restate actually diverge.

Attributes where Atlantis and Restate differ
AttributeAtlantisRestate
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month by durable action count
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hostedLinux, macOS, Web

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Developer Tools).

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 Restate

  • Durable execution
  • Virtual objects
  • Single binary runtime
  • Multi-language SDKs
  • Workflows and sagas
  • Restate Cloud

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

Restate

  • Payment or order flows where a crash between two external API calls must not double-charge or lose the ordernot Atlantis
  • AI agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-runnot Atlantis
  • Replacing hand-rolled retry, idempotency key and outbox code across a set of microservicesnot Atlantis
  • A small team that wants durable workflows without operating a Temporal cluster and its databasenot 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.

Restate

  • The runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • Restate Cloud jumps from a free fifty thousand actions straight to 300 US dollars a month for twenty million, so a workload sitting at a few hundred thousand actions pays enterprise-shaped money for hobby-shaped volume.
  • It is a young project against Temporal’s established base, so hiring engineers who already know it is unrealistic and the answer to most questions is in the docs rather than on Stack Overflow.
  • The programming model requires structuring code around durable handlers and virtual objects, which is a genuine rewrite for existing services rather than a library you add.
  • The single-binary simplicity that makes small deployments cheap also means fewer operational knobs at very large scale than a system designed as separable components.

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

Restate

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Fifty thousand durable actions per month
    • No credit card required
    • Community support
  • Starter$300/month
    • Twenty million actions per month
    • Two hundred actions per second, bursting to one thousand
    • Twenty GB storage
  • Pro$1000/month
    • Fifty million actions per month
    • Five hundred actions per second, bursting to two thousand
    • Fifty GB storage
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated volume
    • Twenty-four seven P0 support
    • 99.99 per cent SLA

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 Restate if

  • You need durable execution.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Web.
  • You also want virtual objects.
Restate review

Questions people ask

Is Atlantis or Restate better?
Neither clearly leads. Atlantis starts at Free and Restate at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Atlantis or Restate?
Atlantis starts at Free and Restate at Free.
Does Atlantis or Restate run on more platforms?
Atlantis runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted. Restate runs on Linux, macOS, Web.
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 Restate is typically brought in for.
What can Atlantis do that Restate cannot?
Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Comment driven apply, Workspace locking, Policy checking. Restate covers Durable execution, Virtual objects, Single binary runtime, Multi-language SDKs.

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.

Restate: Is Restate open source?

The SDKs are MIT. The runtime is under a Business Source Licence, which permits self-hosting but not offering it as a competing service.

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.

Restate: How does it compare with Temporal?

Same problem, different shape: one Rust binary with embedded storage instead of a server plus database plus workers, and lower per-step latency.

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.

Restate: Is there a free tier?

Yes, fifty thousand durable actions a month on Restate Cloud with no card required.

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.

Restate: Which languages are supported?

TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Go, Python and Rust.

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