Is Earthly or Okteto better?

Neither clearly leads. Earthly starts at Free and Okteto at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Earthly or Okteto?

Earthly starts at Free and Okteto at Free.

Does Earthly or Okteto run on more platforms?

Earthly runs on Web, CLI. Okteto runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, CLI, Kubernetes, Web.

Can I use Earthly for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Earthly best used for?

Earthly is most often used for enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers, automating incident response procedures across all repositories, embedding compliance requirements into development workflows, standardizing build processes with earthfiles. Of those, enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers and automating incident response procedures across all repositories are not what Okteto is typically brought in for.

What can Earthly do that Okteto cannot?

Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. Okteto covers Cluster development environments, File synchronisation, Development containers, Environment catalogue.

Developer Tools · head to head

Earthly vs Okteto

Earthly

Developer Tools

Engineering guardrails for the AI era

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Okteto

Developer Tools

Runs production-like development environments on your own Kubernetes cluster

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Earthly pricing model not published; requires sales contact; Okteto two of the three plans publish no price at all, with no currency and no billing period stated anywhere, so any budget above five seats requires a sales conversation before you can even compare it with an alternative.
They diverge on capability: Earthly covers Policy as code, Okteto covers Cluster development environments.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Earthly and Okteto actually diverge.

Attributes where Earthly and Okteto differ
Attribute	Earthly	Okteto
Pricing model	No pricing published on website	quote
Platforms	Web, CLI	Linux, macOS, Windows, CLI, Kubernetes, Web
Founded	2020	Unknown

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 Earthly

Policy as code
Multi-stage enforcement
AI agent governance
Repository-wide policies
Incident response automation
Compliance management
Earthfiles build tool
Satellites

Only in Okteto

Cluster development environments
File synchronisation
Development containers
Environment catalogue
Preview environments
Bring your own cloud

What people use each for

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

Earthly

Enforcing engineering standards across AI and human developersnot Okteto
Automating incident response procedures across all repositoriesnot Okteto
Embedding compliance requirements into development workflowsnot Okteto
Standardizing build processes with Earthfilesnot Okteto

Okteto

A microservices estate where no developer can run the full dependency graph on a laptopnot Earthly
Giving each pull request a working environment reviewers can click rather than describenot Earthly
Letting coding agents build and test against real databases and queues instead of mocksnot Earthly
Removing a fleet of local Kubernetes installations that drift from production and produce false test resultsnot Earthly

Where each one falls short

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

Earthly

Pricing model not published; requires sales contact
Earthly Lunar is a recent launch (2025) with limited track record
Primarily GitHub-focused; limited integration with other platforms
No public documentation on pricing or feature tiers

Okteto

Two of the three plans publish no price at all, with no currency and no billing period stated anywhere, so any budget above five seats requires a sales conversation before you can even compare it with an alternative.
The Apache-2.0 CLI is restricted to the development section of the manifest, so build services, user management and observability all require the commercial platform and the open licence provides very little continuity insurance.
The last disclosed funding round is a 15 million US dollar Series A from February 2022 with nothing announced since, and the contributor base is dominated by company employees, which is concentrated risk for something embedded in every developer daily loop.
You must bring and pay for the Kubernetes cluster, so node cost, capacity planning and version upgrades stay with your platform team on top of the licence fee.
The 2026 repositioning towards AI agents means the classic developer inner loop is no longer what the marketing leads with, so a buyer purchasing that use case should confirm roadmap commitment rather than assume it.

Pricing, plan by plan

Earthly

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Earthly review.

Okteto

Free

StarterFree
- 5 seats included
- Self-hosted deployment into your own cluster
- Community support
Scale$undefined/year
- Contact sales, no price, currency or billing period published
- More seats and environments than Starter
- Self-hosted deployment
Enterprise$undefined/year
- Contact sales, no price published
- Bring your own cloud deployment
- Available through Google Cloud and AWS marketplaces

Which should you pick?

Choose Earthly if

You need policy as code.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Web, CLI.
You also want multi-stage enforcement.

Earthly review

Choose Okteto if

You need cluster development environments.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, CLI, Kubernetes, Web.
You also want file synchronisation.

Okteto review

Questions people ask

Is Earthly or Okteto better?: Neither clearly leads. Earthly starts at Free and Okteto at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Earthly or Okteto?: Earthly starts at Free and Okteto at Free.
Does Earthly or Okteto run on more platforms?: Earthly runs on Web, CLI. Okteto runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, CLI, Kubernetes, Web.
Can I use Earthly for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Earthly best used for?: Earthly is most often used for enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers, automating incident response procedures across all repositories, embedding compliance requirements into development workflows, standardizing build processes with earthfiles. Of those, enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers and automating incident response procedures across all repositories are not what Okteto is typically brought in for.
What can Earthly do that Okteto cannot?: Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. Okteto covers Cluster development environments, File synchronisation, Development containers, Environment catalogue.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Earthly: What is the difference between Earthfiles and Earthly Lunar?

Earthfiles is an open-source build tool that reached 12,000 GitHub stars and is used by companies like NVIDIA, Intel, and Databricks. Earthly Lunar is a separate governance platform launched in 2025 for enforcing standards across development workflows.

Source

Okteto: Is Okteto open source?

The CLI is Apache-2.0, but the README states it supports only the development section of the manifest. Everything operationally interesting, including builds, user management and observability, is in the commercial platform.

Earthly: How does Earthly Lunar enforce standards?

Lunar converts engineering standards, compliance requirements, and processes documented in AGENTS.md files, wikis, and incident postmortems into enforceable guardrails that apply consistently across repositories and development stages.

Source

Okteto: What does it cost?

Only the free Starter tier with five seats is published. Scale and Enterprise are both contact sales, with no price, currency or billing period disclosed on the pricing page.

Earthly: What is the pricing for Earthly Lunar?

Pricing is not published on the website. Interested customers should contact Earthly's sales team for current pricing and feature tiers.

Source

Okteto: Do I need my own Kubernetes cluster?

Yes. Okteto installs into a cluster you provide and pay for, so capacity, upgrades and node costs remain your responsibility in addition to the licence.

Okteto: How is this different from running Kubernetes locally?

Environments run against the same managed databases, queues and service mesh as production, so a class of failures that only appears in a real cluster is caught before merge rather than after deploy.

Earthly vs Okteto

Earthly

Okteto

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Earthly

Only in Okteto

What people use each for

Earthly

Okteto

Where each one falls short

Earthly

Okteto

Pricing, plan by plan

Earthly

Okteto

Which should you pick?

Choose Earthly if

Choose Okteto if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Earthly

More on Okteto

Keep looking

Other head to heads