Is Earthly or Portworx better?

Neither clearly leads. Earthly starts at Free and Portworx at $0.33/node hour, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Earthly or Portworx?

Earthly has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Earthly and $0.33/node hour for Portworx.

Does Earthly or Portworx run on more platforms?

Earthly runs on Web, CLI. Portworx runs on Linux.

Can I use Earthly for free?

Yes. Earthly has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portworx starts at $0.33/node hour.

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 Portworx is typically brought in for.

What can Earthly do that Portworx cannot?

Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. Portworx covers Container-native volumes, Failure domain placement, Volume encryption, Database automation.

Developer Tools · head to head

Earthly vs Portworx

Earthly

Developer Tools

Engineering guardrails for the AI era

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Portworx

Cloud

Kubernetes-native storage and data services, priced by the node hour

From: $0.33/node hour
Rated: -

Full review Website

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; Portworx bare metal nodes are charged at 1.11 USD per node hour against 0.33 for virtual nodes, so a bare metal cluster costs more than three times a virtualised one for identical capability.
They diverge on capability: Earthly covers Policy as code, Portworx covers Container-native volumes.
Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Earthly and Portworx actually diverge.

Attributes where Earthly and Portworx differ
Attribute	Earthly	Portworx
Starting price	Free	$0.33/node hour
Pricing model	No pricing published on website	Per node hour
Free tier	Yes	No
Platforms	Web, CLI	Linux
Category	Developer Tools	Cloud
Founded	2020	Unknown

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 Earthly

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

Only in Portworx

Container-native volumes
Failure domain placement
Volume encryption
Database automation
Disaster recovery
Autopilot capacity management
Hardware independence

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

Portworx

Running a production PostgreSQL or Cassandra cluster on Kubernetes and needing the data to survive node lossnot Earthly
A platform team offering self-service databases to developers on an internal Kubernetes platformnot Earthly
Failing over stateful applications between clusters in different regions as a disaster recovery positionnot Earthly
An OpenShift estate where the built-in storage option does not meet the availability requirement for stateful setsnot 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

Portworx

Bare metal nodes are charged at 1.11 USD per node hour against 0.33 for virtual nodes, so a bare metal cluster costs more than three times a virtualised one for identical capability.
A 1,000 node hour monthly minimum applies, which means small or intermittent clusters pay for capacity they do not consume.
Replicating volumes across nodes consumes real capacity and network bandwidth, so the underlying infrastructure cost rises alongside the licence in a way the node hour rate does not show.
Pure Storage ownership means roadmap priorities are set by an array vendor, and buyers should confirm that hardware independence remains contractual rather than assumed.
Operating it well requires Kubernetes storage expertise, and teams that adopted Kubernetes to simplify operations often find they have added a distributed storage system to run.

Pricing, plan by plan

Earthly

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Earthly review.

Portworx

$0.33/node hour

Portworx Enterprise on virtual machine nodes$0.33/node hour
- Minimum 1,000 node hours per month
- Replicated persistent volumes
- Encryption and disaster recovery
Portworx Enterprise on bare metal nodes$1.11/node hour
- Minimum 1,000 node hours per month
- Same capabilities on bare metal clusters
- Higher rate reflects node density

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 Portworx if

You need container-native volumes.
You work on Linux.
You also want failure domain placement.

Portworx review

Questions people ask

Is Earthly or Portworx better?: Neither clearly leads. Earthly starts at Free and Portworx at $0.33/node hour, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Earthly or Portworx?: Earthly has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Earthly and $0.33/node hour for Portworx.
Does Earthly or Portworx run on more platforms?: Earthly runs on Web, CLI. Portworx runs on Linux.
Can I use Earthly for free?: Yes. Earthly has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portworx starts at $0.33/node hour.
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 Portworx is typically brought in for.
What can Earthly do that Portworx cannot?: Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. Portworx covers Container-native volumes, Failure domain placement, Volume encryption, Database automation.

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

Portworx: Is Portworx tied to Pure Storage hardware?

No. It runs on any Kubernetes distribution over any underlying storage, though Pure has owned it since 2020 and sets the roadmap.

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

Portworx: What does a real cluster cost?

At 0.33 USD per virtual node hour, twenty nodes running continuously is roughly 4,800 USD a month. Bare metal at 1.11 USD per node hour is around 16,000 USD for the same node count.

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

Portworx: Is backup included?

No. Portworx Backup is a separately priced product covering Kubernetes application backup.

Earthly vs Portworx

Earthly

Portworx

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Earthly

Only in Portworx

What people use each for

Earthly

Portworx

Where each one falls short

Earthly

Portworx

Pricing, plan by plan

Earthly

Portworx

Which should you pick?

Choose Earthly if

Choose Portworx if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Earthly

More on Portworx

Keep looking

Other head to heads