Developer Tools · head to head
Cortex vs Teleport
Cortex
Developer Tools
Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and maturity rather than just cataloguing services
- From
- On request
- Free plan
- No
Teleport
Cybersecurity
Certificate-based access to servers, Kubernetes, databases and apps, replacing shared credentials and VPNs
- 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.; Teleport pricing is not published and is described as active users plus protected resources, so an autoscaling estate cannot forecast the bill and finance teams discover the true cost only after the first true-up.
- They diverge on capability: Cortex covers Service catalogue, Teleport covers Short-lived certificates.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Cortex and Teleport 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 Teleport
- Short-lived certificates
- Protocol coverage
- Session recording and replay
- Access Requests
- Device Trust
- Identity provider integration
- Machine identity
- FIPS and FedRAMP builds
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 Teleport
- An organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitionsnot Teleport
- Enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident reviewnot Teleport
- Replacing a self-hosted Backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgradednot Teleport
Teleport
- Removing long-lived SSH keys and shared database passwords so that offboarding an engineer takes one action in the identity providernot Cortex
- Producing session recordings and per-user database audit trails as direct evidence for SOC 2 or FedRAMPnot Cortex
- Giving contractors or on-call engineers time-boxed, approved access to production instead of standing admin rightsnot Cortex
- Replacing a flat VPN with per-resource authorisation across servers, Kubernetes and internal web appsnot 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.
Teleport
- Pricing is not published and is described as active users plus protected resources, so an autoscaling estate cannot forecast the bill and finance teams discover the true cost only after the first true-up.
- The proxy is a hard dependency on reaching production, so it needs its own high availability deployment and a tested break-glass path or an outage in Teleport becomes an outage in your ability to respond to outages.
- The open source Community Edition omits Access Requests, Device Trust and the FIPS builds, which are exactly the controls an auditor asks about, so the free tier rarely survives a compliance review.
- Self-hosting means running and upgrading a certificate authority and its backing store, and Teleport releases frequently enough that upgrade work becomes a standing operational commitment.
- Coverage across protocols is uneven in depth, so teams with legacy systems, unusual databases or bespoke network appliances find gaps that still require the old VPN to remain in place alongside it.
Pricing, plan by plan
Cortex
On request- Cortex$undefined/year
- Service catalogue and ownership mapping
- Scorecards and initiatives
- Self-service templates
Teleport
On request- Teleport Community Edition$undefined/year
- Open source, self-hosted
- SSH, Kubernetes, database and app access
- Session recording
- Teleport Enterprise$undefined/year
- Cloud-hosted or self-hosted
- Access Requests and approval workflow
- Device Trust and hardware key enforcement
Which should you pick?
Choose Cortex if
- You need service catalogue.
- You work on Web, API.
- You also want scorecards.
Choose Teleport if
- You need short-lived certificates.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- You also want protocol coverage.
Questions people ask
- Is Cortex or Teleport better?
- Neither clearly leads. Cortex starts at On request and Teleport at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Cortex or Teleport?
- Cortex starts at On request and Teleport at On request.
- Does Cortex or Teleport run on more platforms?
- Cortex runs on Web, API. Teleport runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- 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 Teleport is typically brought in for.
- What can Cortex do that Teleport cannot?
- Cortex covers Service catalogue, Scorecards, Initiatives, Self-service templates. Teleport covers Short-lived certificates, Protocol coverage, Session recording and replay, Access Requests.
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.
Teleport: Is the open source edition usable in production?
Yes, but it lacks Access Requests, Device Trust and FIPS builds, which most compliance programmes end up requiring.
Cortex: Is pricing published?
No. Cortex requires a sales conversation and prepares a custom proposal.
Teleport: How is it priced?
Not publicly. The vendor prices on active users and protected resources and provides a quote after a sales conversation.
Cortex: Can it self-host?
It is offered as a hosted product; on-premise arrangements are handled through sales rather than published.
Teleport: What happens if Teleport goes down?
Nobody reaches the resources behind it, so you need a highly available deployment and a documented break-glass procedure.
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.
Teleport: Does it replace our VPN?
For anything you put behind it, yes. Legacy systems and appliances it does not support will keep the VPN alive.
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