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Developer Tools · head to head

Earthly vs OpsLevel

Earthly logo

Earthly

Developer Tools

Engineering guardrails for the AI era

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
OpsLevel logo

OpsLevel

Developer Tools

Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and production readiness

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Earthly has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Earthly pricing model not published; requires sales contact; OpsLevel opsLevel does not publish prices at all, not even a starting figure, so you cannot size a budget or compare against Backstage's zero licence cost without entering a sales cycle.
  • They diverge on capability: Earthly covers Policy as code, OpsLevel covers Service catalogue.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Earthly and OpsLevel actually diverge.

Attributes where Earthly and OpsLevel differ
AttributeEarthlyOpsLevel
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelNo pricing published on websitequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, CLIWeb
Founded2020Unknown

Identical on both: 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 OpsLevel

  • Service catalogue
  • Scorecards and rubric
  • Checks
  • Campaigns
  • Self-service actions
  • Slack and Teams integration
  • Catalogue auto-enrichment
  • Deployment on request

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 OpsLevel
  • Automating incident response procedures across all repositoriesnot OpsLevel
  • Embedding compliance requirements into development workflowsnot OpsLevel
  • Standardizing build processes with Earthfilesnot OpsLevel

OpsLevel

  • A platform team that needs to prove every production service has a named owner and an on-call rota before an auditnot Earthly
  • Driving a fleet-wide migration such as a runtime upgrade across 400 services with a deadline and visible progressnot Earthly
  • Giving developers a paved road to create a new service from a template without waiting on the platform teamnot Earthly
  • An organisation where an incident took an hour to route because nobody could identify the owning teamnot 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

OpsLevel

  • OpsLevel does not publish prices at all, not even a starting figure, so you cannot size a budget or compare against Backstage's zero licence cost without entering a sales cycle.
  • The Standard plan caps at 50 users, which is below the size at which service ownership becomes a real problem, so most genuine buyers land on Enterprise and its unpublished pricing.
  • Scores are only as honest as the metadata teams maintain; where ownership records go stale the rubric produces confident numbers about a catalogue that no longer reflects reality, and leadership acts on them.
  • It reports on quality rather than producing it, so it can generate friction between platform teams who set the rubric and product teams who see it as a scoreboard imposed on them without extra headcount to fix the findings.
  • As a hosted product it needs read access to source control, cloud accounts and observability tooling, which is a meaningful vendor review in regulated environments; on-premises exists but only on the Enterprise tier.

Pricing, plan by plan

Earthly

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Earthly review.

OpsLevel

On request
  • Standard$undefined/year
    • Up to 50 users
    • Unlimited catalogued components
    • Scorecards, campaigns and the global rubric
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Unlimited users
    • Custom integrations
    • Customisable dashboards

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 OpsLevel if

  • You need service catalogue.
  • You also want scorecards and rubric.
OpsLevel review

Questions people ask

Is Earthly or OpsLevel better?
Neither clearly leads. Earthly starts at Free and OpsLevel at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Earthly or OpsLevel?
Earthly has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Earthly and On request for OpsLevel.
Does Earthly or OpsLevel run on more platforms?
Earthly runs on Web, CLI. OpsLevel runs on Web.
Can I use Earthly for free?
Yes. Earthly has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. OpsLevel starts at On request.
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 OpsLevel is typically brought in for.
What can Earthly do that OpsLevel cannot?
Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. OpsLevel covers Service catalogue, Scorecards and rubric, Checks, Campaigns.

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
OpsLevel: How much does OpsLevel cost?

It does not publish pricing. Billing is per developer using the portal, with volume discounts, and a quote requires a sales conversation.

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
OpsLevel: How does it compare with Backstage?

Backstage has no licence fee but you staff a team to build and run it. OpsLevel is hosted with checks, campaigns and scorecards out of the box, and you pay per developer instead.

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
OpsLevel: Does it require writing catalogue YAML by hand?

No. It auto-discovers and enriches entries from connected systems, though teams still curate ownership and metadata.

OpsLevel: Can it run on premises?

Yes, but only on the Enterprise plan.

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