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Developer Tools · head to head

Atlantis vs Dagger

Atlantis logo

Atlantis

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Dagger logo

Dagger

Developer Tools

Programmable CI/CD engine that runs your pipeline as containers on any runner

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.; Dagger dagger is not a CI provider, so you keep paying for GitHub Actions or GitLab runners underneath it; the Dagger Cloud subscription is an addition to your CI bill, not a replacement for it.
  • They diverge on capability: Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Dagger covers Pipelines as code.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Atlantis and Dagger actually diverge.

Attributes where Atlantis and Dagger differ
AttributeAtlantisDagger
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month per team for Dagger Cloud
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hostedLinux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted

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 Dagger

  • Pipelines as code
  • Local and CI parity
  • Content-addressed caching
  • Dagger Functions and modules
  • CI-provider agnostic
  • Dagger Cloud traces
  • GitHub Checks integration
  • Container-native execution

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

Dagger

  • A platform team maintaining near-identical build YAML across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls insteadnot Atlantis
  • An engineering organisation migrating off a CI provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migrationnot Atlantis
  • A team whose engineers waste hours pushing commits to debug CI-only failures and needs to reproduce the exact run locallynot Atlantis
  • A monorepo where most commits touch a small subset of services and cache-accurate step skipping cuts build minutes materiallynot 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.

Dagger

  • Dagger is not a CI provider, so you keep paying for GitHub Actions or GitLab runners underneath it; the Dagger Cloud subscription is an addition to your CI bill, not a replacement for it.
  • Writing pipelines in Go or TypeScript raises the barrier to entry: a release engineer who could edit a YAML step now needs to read code, and the people who can fix a broken build shrink to those comfortable with the SDK.
  • The engine runs as a container on the runner and needs a persistent cache volume to deliver its main benefit, so ephemeral CI runners give you correctness without the speed, and provisioning durable cache storage is extra platform work.
  • The Team plan caps at ten users and ten million events per month; an organisation of any size crosses that quickly and moves to Enterprise pricing that is not published, so cost at scale is unknowable up front.
  • The module ecosystem is young and thinly maintained relative to the marketplace of a mature CI provider, so integrations that exist as a one-line Action often have to be written yourself as a Dagger function.

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

Dagger

Free
  • IndividualFree
    • One user
    • One million events per month
    • Workflow logs and function call traces
  • Team$50/month
    • Up to ten users
    • Ten million events per month
    • Module insights and module catalogue
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom user and event limits
    • SSO
    • Managed single-tenant deployment

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 Dagger if

  • You need pipelines as code.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
  • You also want local and ci parity.
Dagger review

Questions people ask

Is Atlantis or Dagger better?
Neither clearly leads. Atlantis starts at Free and Dagger at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Atlantis or Dagger?
Atlantis starts at Free and Dagger at Free.
Does Atlantis or Dagger run on more platforms?
Atlantis runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted. Dagger runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
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 Dagger is typically brought in for.
What can Atlantis do that Dagger cannot?
Atlantis covers Pull request plans, Comment driven apply, Workspace locking, Policy checking. Dagger covers Pipelines as code, Local and CI parity, Content-addressed caching, Dagger Functions and modules.

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.

Dagger: Does Dagger replace GitHub Actions?

No. Dagger runs inside GitHub Actions or any other CI. It replaces the YAML that describes your pipeline steps, not the trigger and runner layer.

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.

Dagger: Is the engine open source?

Yes, the Dagger engine and SDKs are open source and free. Dagger Cloud, the observability product, is what costs money.

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.

Dagger: What is an event in the pricing?

Dagger Cloud meters pipeline telemetry events. One million per month is free; the Team plan at 50 USD per month allows ten million.

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.

Dagger: Can I run the same pipeline on my laptop?

Yes, that is the main reason teams adopt it. The dagger CLI executes the identical graph locally, so CI-only failures become reproducible.

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