Softwr

Cybersecurity · head to head

Diligent vs Garden

Diligent logo

Diligent

Cybersecurity

Board management and enterprise GRC platform assembled from Galvanize, Steele and Diligent Boards

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Garden logo

Garden

Developer Tools

Kubernetes development and testing automation with shared caching, now owned by Incredibuild

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Garden has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Diligent the platform is an assembly of acquisitions, with the analytics engine from ACL, risk from Rsam, ethics and third-party diligence from Steele and the board portal from Diligent itself, so cross-module reporting and consistent user experience should be tested in a proof of concept rather than assumed.; Garden incredibuild acquired Garden in November 2024 and the pricing page now redirects to documentation, so there is no public commercial offer and no published roadmap for a team betting a platform on it.
  • They diverge on capability: Diligent covers Diligent Boards, Garden covers Action graph.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Diligent and Garden actually diverge.

Attributes where Diligent and Garden differ
AttributeDiligentGarden
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelquoteOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, WindowsLinux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes
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 Diligent

  • Diligent Boards
  • Entity management
  • Audit and analytics
  • Risk management
  • Third-party risk
  • Ethics and compliance
  • ESG and sustainability
  • Market intelligence

Only in Garden

  • Action graph
  • Shared result caching
  • Remote Kubernetes environments
  • In-cluster builds
  • Same config everywhere
  • Hot reload sync
  • Helm and Kustomize support
  • Templating

What people use each for

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

Diligent

  • A listed company that wants board papers, entity records and the audit committee reporting pack produced from one governance systemnot Garden
  • An internal audit function moving from sampling to full-population transaction testing using the ACL heritage analytics enginenot Garden
  • A regulated firm consolidating a whistleblower hotline, third-party due diligence and policy attestation after an enforcement findingnot Garden
  • A group needing sustainability disclosure data collected with the same audit trail and controls as financial reportingnot Garden

Garden

  • A platform team whose integration test suite takes longer than the coffee break and needs caching to cut the loopnot Diligent
  • An organisation with thirty or more services on Kubernetes where docker-compose no longer approximates productionnot Diligent
  • Giving every developer an ephemeral namespace instead of queuing for one shared staging environmentnot Diligent
  • Running the identical build and test definition locally and in CI so failures reproduce on a laptopnot Diligent

Where each one falls short

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

Diligent

  • The platform is an assembly of acquisitions, with the analytics engine from ACL, risk from Rsam, ethics and third-party diligence from Steele and the board portal from Diligent itself, so cross-module reporting and consistent user experience should be tested in a proof of concept rather than assumed.
  • Pricing is unpublished and consistently at the top of the market, and organisations that need only one capability, a board portal or an audit analytics tool, generally pay less and get more from a specialist.
  • Renewal leverage is weak once the board portal is embedded, because directors are the least willing user group to be migrated and that dependency is well understood by the vendor at renewal time.
  • The analytics engine expects real data skills, and audit teams without an analytics-capable member typically use a fraction of what they licensed while paying for all of it.
  • Module-by-module implementation means the promised single view of governance and risk usually arrives years after the first purchase, if the later modules are ever funded.

Garden

  • Incredibuild acquired Garden in November 2024 and the pricing page now redirects to documentation, so there is no public commercial offer and no published roadmap for a team betting a platform on it.
  • It is tightly bound to Kubernetes, so teams running on ECS, Nomad, plain VMs or serverless get little from it and would need a different tool entirely.
  • The YAML action graph is a real configuration surface: a large monorepo needs someone to own and maintain Garden config as a first-class artefact, which is a standing platform-engineering cost.
  • Shared remote environments mean every developer needs cluster access and a cost allocation model, so cloud spend rises and namespace sprawl becomes a thing you have to police.
  • Caching correctness depends on declaring dependencies accurately; an under-declared action will serve a stale cached pass and hide a genuine test failure, which is a hard class of bug to notice.

Pricing, plan by plan

Diligent

On request
  • Diligent One Platform$undefined/year
    • Quoted by module and user count
    • Board portal seats priced separately from GRC modules
    • Annual subscription, commonly multi-year

Garden

Free
  • Garden open sourceFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed CLI
    • Full action graph and caching
    • Self-managed clusters
  • Commercial tier$undefined/year
    • Hosted caching and team features
    • Support and onboarding
    • Pricing no longer published since the Incredibuild acquisition

Which should you pick?

Choose Diligent if

  • You need diligent boards.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
  • You also want entity management.
Diligent review

Choose Garden if

  • You need action graph.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes.
  • You also want shared result caching.
Garden review

Questions people ask

Is Diligent or Garden better?
Neither clearly leads. Diligent starts at On request and Garden at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Diligent or Garden?
Garden has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Diligent and Free for Garden.
Does Diligent or Garden run on more platforms?
Diligent runs on Web, iOS, Android, Windows. Garden runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes.
Can I use Garden for free?
Yes. Garden has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Diligent starts at On request.
What is Diligent best used for?
Diligent is most often used for a listed company that wants board papers, entity records and the audit committee reporting pack produced from one governance system, an internal audit function moving from sampling to full-population transaction testing using the acl heritage analytics engine, a regulated firm consolidating a whistleblower hotline, third-party due diligence and policy attestation after an enforcement finding, a group needing sustainability disclosure data collected with the same audit trail and controls as financial reporting. Of those, a listed company that wants board papers, entity records and the audit committee reporting pack produced from one governance system and an internal audit function moving from sampling to full-population transaction testing using the acl heritage analytics engine are not what Garden is typically brought in for.
What can Diligent do that Garden cannot?
Diligent covers Diligent Boards, Entity management, Audit and analytics, Risk management. Garden covers Action graph, Shared result caching, Remote Kubernetes environments, In-cluster builds.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Diligent: Is Diligent One the same product as Galvanize?

It contains it. Diligent bought Galvanize, the ACL and Rsam merger, for around one billion dollars in April 2021, and its audit analytics and risk modules are that heritage rebranded into Diligent One.

Garden: Is Garden still maintained?

The open source project remains on GitHub under Incredibuild ownership, but the commercial pricing page redirects to the docs and there is no public paid offer.

Diligent: What does Diligent cost?

Not published. It is quoted by module and user, and board portal seats are priced differently from GRC seats. Expect an annual or multi-year enterprise agreement.

Garden: Do I need Kubernetes?

Effectively yes. Garden is built around Kubernetes environments and offers little to teams on other runtimes.

Diligent: Can you buy just the board portal?

Yes, Diligent Boards is sold on its own and is the most common entry point. The GRC modules are separate purchases.

Garden: Does it replace my CI system?

No. It runs inside GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or similar and speeds up what those pipelines execute.

Diligent: Does it replace a SOC 2 automation tool?

No. Diligent is aimed at enterprise audit, risk and governance, not at automated evidence collection for security certifications.

Garden: What is the actual saving?

It comes from skipping builds and tests whose inputs have not changed, so the benefit scales with how many services you have and how often only a few change.

Share

Related pages

More on Diligent

More on Garden

Keep looking

Other head to heads