Developer Tools · head to head
Cortex vs Semperis
Cortex
Developer Tools
Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and maturity rather than just cataloguing services
- From
- On request
- Free plan
- No
Semperis
Cybersecurity
Identity threat detection and Active Directory forest recovery for AD, Entra ID and Okta, from a privately held US vendor.
- From
- On request
- Free plan
- No
The short version
- Each has a real cost: Cortex pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.; Semperis scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
- They diverge on capability: Cortex covers Service catalogue, Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Cortex and Semperis actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), 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 Cortex
- Service catalogue
- Scorecards
- Initiatives
- Self-service templates
- Query language
- Eng intelligence
- Integrations layer
- On-call and ownership mapping
Only in Semperis
- Active Directory Forest Recovery
- Malware-free restore
- Replication-stream monitoring
- Automated rollback
- Attack indicator scoring
- Entra ID and Okta coverage
- Purple Knight
- Forest Druid
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Cortex
- A platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a Kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of servicesnot Semperis
- An organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitionsnot Semperis
- Enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident reviewnot Semperis
- Replacing a self-hosted Backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgradednot Semperis
Semperis
- An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot Cortex
- Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot Cortex
- Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot Cortex
- Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot Cortex
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Cortex
- Pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.
- The catalogue is only as accurate as the metadata you supply, so an organisation with inconsistent repository conventions spends its first quarter cleaning data before any scorecard means anything.
- Scorecards create political friction: publishing a per-team grade turns an engineering standard into a performance metric, and teams will game the rules rather than fix the underlying issue.
- It is closed source and hosted, so organisations with strict data residency or air-gap requirements have limited options compared with running Backstage themselves.
- Value scales with organisation size, so a company with fifty engineers and thirty services will find the catalogue tells them nothing they did not already know while still paying an enterprise contract.
Semperis
- Scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
- The licence buys tooling, not a proven runbook: forest recovery is only worth what your last rehearsal demonstrated, and a plan that has never been executed end to end in a lab is an untested assumption regardless of what was purchased.
- It overlaps with backup and directory management products from Quest, Veeam, Commvault and others, so the buyer must argue internally why a dedicated product is needed alongside a backup contract that already claims to protect Active Directory.
- Running Directory Services Protector well requires someone who understands AD internals, replication metadata and Tier 0 attack paths, and without that person the alerts on privileged changes are either ignored or auto-reverted in ways that break legitimate administration.
- Licensing is driven by identity object counts, so directories carrying years of stale user accounts and service principals pay for objects that should have been deleted, and the cleanup project that would reduce the bill is the one nobody has time for.
Pricing, plan by plan
Cortex
On request- Cortex$undefined/year
- Service catalogue and ownership mapping
- Scorecards and initiatives
- Self-service templates
Semperis
On requestNo published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.
Which should you pick?
Choose Cortex if
- You need service catalogue.
- You work on Web, API.
- You also want scorecards.
Choose Semperis if
- You need active directory forest recovery.
- You also want malware-free restore.
Questions people ask
- Is Cortex or Semperis better?
- Neither clearly leads. Cortex starts at On request and Semperis at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Cortex or Semperis?
- Cortex starts at On request and Semperis at On request.
- Does Cortex or Semperis run on more platforms?
- Cortex runs on Web, API. Semperis runs on Web.
- What is Cortex best used for?
- Cortex is most often used for a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services, an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions, enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident review, replacing a self-hosted backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgraded. Of those, a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services and an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions are not what Semperis is typically brought in for.
- What can Cortex do that Semperis cannot?
- Cortex covers Service catalogue, Scorecards, Initiatives, Self-service templates. Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Cortex: How is Cortex different from Backstage?
Backstage is an open source framework you build and staff. Cortex is a hosted product with scorecards and initiatives out of the box and no platform team required to keep it running.
Semperis: Does this replace my backups?
No. It replaces the Active Directory recovery procedure specifically. You still need backups for everything else, and the point of Semperis is that a generic system-state backup of a domain controller is a poor way to recover a forest because it restores the operating system along with whatever compromised it.
Cortex: Is pricing published?
No. Cortex requires a sales conversation and prepares a custom proposal.
Semperis: Is it useful if we are cloud-only on Entra ID?
Partly. Directory Services Protector covers Entra ID and Okta for change tracking and posture, but the forest recovery product, which is the strongest reason to buy, applies to on-premises Active Directory. A genuinely cloud-only organisation should weigh it against Microsoft's own tooling.
Cortex: Can it self-host?
It is offered as a hosted product; on-premise arrangements are handled through sales rather than published.
Semperis: Are Purple Knight and Forest Druid really free?
Yes, both are free downloads with no licence requirement, and they are widely used by organisations that are not Semperis customers. They are also, transparently, the top of the sales funnel.
Cortex: What is the main adoption risk?
Bad or missing service metadata. The catalogue and every scorecard on top of it inherit whatever quality your repositories already have.
Semperis: How long does forest recovery actually take?
The honest answer is whatever your rehearsal took. The vendor's case is hours instead of days, and automation genuinely removes most manual steps, but the number that matters for your board is the one from a test in your own environment.
Semperis: Does it require agents on domain controllers?
It collects directory changes from the AD replication stream, which is what lets it see changes that bypass the security log. Deployment details vary by product and version, so confirm the exact architecture against your domain controller change-control rules.
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