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Cybersecurity · head to head

Delinea vs Tilt

Delinea logo

Delinea

Cybersecurity

Privileged access management from the merged Thycotic and Centrify

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Tilt logo

Tilt

Developer Tools

Local Kubernetes development loop that rebuilds and live-updates containers on save

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Tilt has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Delinea the Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.; Tilt docker acquired Tilt in 2022 and the team now splits its time across Compose and Docker Desktop, so feature velocity is modest and the product's long-term priority inside Docker is not guaranteed; treat it as a stable utility, not a growing platform.
  • They diverge on capability: Delinea covers Secret Server, Tilt covers Live update.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Delinea and Tilt actually diverge.

Attributes where Delinea and Tilt differ
AttributeDelineaTilt
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelquoteOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Windows, Linux, macOSLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryCybersecurityDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: 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 Delinea

  • Secret Server
  • Privileged session recording
  • Privilege Manager
  • Server PAM
  • Discovery
  • DevOps secrets
  • Behaviour analytics

Only in Tilt

  • Live update
  • Tiltfile as code
  • Unified web UI
  • Selective rebuilds
  • Local and remote clusters
  • Resource dependencies
  • Extensions registry
  • Custom buttons and triggers

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Delinea

  • An organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotatednot Tilt
  • A mid-market IT team that abandoned a heavier PAM rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeksnot Tilt
  • A company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incidentnot Tilt
  • An audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractorsnot Tilt

Tilt

  • A team of ten or more engineers whose application is fifteen microservices on Kubernetes and who currently wait on CI to test a changenot Delinea
  • An organisation onboarding new developers who want a single command that stands up the whole stack from a committed Tiltfilenot Delinea
  • A platform team giving product engineers a consistent local environment against a shared remote development clusternot Delinea
  • A codebase where one repository contains several services and rebuilding all of them on every edit is the main source of lost timenot Delinea

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Delinea

  • The Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • Modules are licensed separately by different units, per privileged user for the vault and per endpoint for privilege management, which makes total cost hard to model and easy to underestimate at scale.
  • Delinea does not publish rates, so buyers benchmark against third party and public sector listings; expect list prices to be negotiable by a wide margin, which means the first quote is not the price.
  • Thoma Bravo ownership since 2021 has coincided with firmer renewal pricing, and buyers with a single-vendor PAM estate have little leverage once credentials are inside the vault.
  • Migrating out of a privileged access vault is a genuinely hard project because every automated process that fetches a secret has to be repointed, so the switching cost is real and the vendor knows it.

Tilt

  • Docker acquired Tilt in 2022 and the team now splits its time across Compose and Docker Desktop, so feature velocity is modest and the product's long-term priority inside Docker is not guaranteed; treat it as a stable utility, not a growing platform.
  • The Tiltfile is Starlark, a Python dialect, so non-trivial setups become real programs that need reviewing and maintaining, and the person who wrote yours becomes a single point of failure.
  • Live update only works when the running container can accept synced files and restart the process; compiled languages, distroless images and read-only filesystems often force you back to a full image rebuild, which removes the main benefit.
  • It assumes Kubernetes. If your development target is plain Docker Compose or serverless functions, Tilt adds a cluster you did not need and a layer of abstraction with no payoff.
  • There is no commercial support contract, no SLA and no paid tier, so when a Kubernetes version upgrade breaks something you are dependent on GitHub issues and a Slack channel rather than a vendor you can escalate to.

Pricing, plan by plan

Delinea

On request
  • Secret Server$undefined/year
    • Priced per privileged user, tiered by edition
    • Cloud or on premises deployment
    • Session recording in higher editions
  • Privilege Manager$undefined/year
    • Priced per endpoint
    • Local admin rights removal and application elevation
    • Licensed separately from Secret Server
  • Server PAM$undefined/year
    • Priced per managed server or per privileged user
    • Just-in-time server access
    • Licensed separately

Tilt

Free
  • TiltFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed
    • All features, no paid tier
    • Community support via the Kubernetes Slack #tilt channel

Which should you pick?

Choose Delinea if

  • You need secret server.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
  • You also want privileged session recording.
Delinea review

Choose Tilt if

  • You need live update.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want tiltfile as code.
Tilt review

Questions people ask

Is Delinea or Tilt better?
Neither clearly leads. Delinea starts at On request and Tilt at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Delinea or Tilt?
Tilt has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Delinea and Free for Tilt.
Does Delinea or Tilt run on more platforms?
Delinea runs on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS. Tilt runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Tilt for free?
Yes. Tilt has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Delinea starts at On request.
What is Delinea best used for?
Delinea is most often used for an organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotated, a mid-market it team that abandoned a heavier pam rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeks, a company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incident, an audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractors. Of those, an organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotated and a mid-market it team that abandoned a heavier pam rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeks are not what Tilt is typically brought in for.
What can Delinea do that Tilt cannot?
Delinea covers Secret Server, Privileged session recording, Privilege Manager, Server PAM. Tilt covers Live update, Tiltfile as code, Unified web UI, Selective rebuilds.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Delinea: Is Delinea the same as Thycotic?

Delinea is the merged company formed from Thycotic and Centrify in 2021. Secret Server is the former Thycotic product; the server access products come from Centrify.

Tilt: Is Tilt free?

Yes, entirely. It is Apache 2.0 open source with no paid tier and no licence fee.

Delinea: Is pricing published?

Not by Delinea. Public sector frameworks have listed Secret Server Cloud around 348 GBP per user per year, which is a reference point, not a quote.

Tilt: Who owns Tilt now?

Docker, which acquired it in May 2022. It remains open source and the repository is still actively maintained.

Delinea: Does one licence cover endpoints and servers?

No. Secret Server, Privilege Manager and Server PAM are separately licensed on different units. Scope all three if your requirement spans them.

Tilt: Do I need a remote cluster?

No. It works against a local cluster such as kind, minikube or Docker Desktop, and also against a shared remote development cluster if your services are too heavy to run locally.

Tilt: How is it different from Skaffold?

Both automate the build-deploy loop. Tilt puts more weight on the live-update path and a multi-service dashboard; Skaffold is more configuration-driven and closer to Google's tooling.

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