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Developer Tools · head to head

Garden vs IBM QRadar

Garden logo

Garden

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
IBM QRadar logo

IBM QRadar

Cybersecurity

Enterprise SIEM licensed by events per second, whose cloud business IBM sold to Palo Alto Networks in 2024.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Garden has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: 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.; IBM QRadar iBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and those customers are being moved to Cortex XSIAM, so anyone buying today is choosing an on-premises product whose vendor has publicly moved the cloud future to a competitor, and the support horizon becomes a contract negotiation rather than an assumption.
  • They diverge on capability: Garden covers Action graph, IBM QRadar covers Offence model.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Garden and IBM QRadar actually diverge.

Attributes where Garden and IBM QRadar differ
AttributeGardenIBM QRadar
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feesubscription
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, macOS, Windows, KubernetesWeb, Api
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity
FoundedUnknown1911

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 Garden

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

Only in IBM QRadar

  • Offence model
  • Network flow analysis
  • Device Support Modules
  • Ariel query language
  • Rules and building blocks
  • Deployment topology
  • App Exchange
  • Use Case Manager

What people use each for

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

Garden

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

IBM QRadar

  • A regulated enterprise that must keep log data on premises or in a specific jurisdiction and cannot use a shared SaaS SIEMnot Garden
  • A SOC that wants log correlation and network flow analysis in one platform rather than buying an NDR product separatelynot Garden
  • An existing QRadar estate deciding whether to stay on premises or accept the migration path to a different vendor's platformnot Garden
  • Compliance-driven log retention and reporting where the audit requirement is specific about collection, retention and reportingnot Garden

Where each one falls short

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

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.

IBM QRadar

  • IBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and those customers are being moved to Cortex XSIAM, so anyone buying today is choosing an on-premises product whose vendor has publicly moved the cloud future to a competitor, and the support horizon becomes a contract negotiation rather than an assumption.
  • Licensing is by events per second and flows per minute, so every additional log source raises the cost directly and teams routinely exclude verbose sources such as DNS, proxy, endpoint and cloud audit logs to stay under the licence, which strips out exactly the data an investigation later needs.
  • It needs a dedicated operator: rule tuning, parser work and offence triage are continuous jobs, and an organisation that deploys QRadar without at least one named engineer accumulates thousands of unreviewed offences and a false sense of coverage.
  • A log source without a matching Device Support Module arrives unparsed, and writing a custom parser with regular expressions against an unfamiliar payload format is specialist work that can take days per source, which quietly determines which systems ever get monitored.
  • On-premises capacity is planned across consoles, processors, collectors and data nodes, so outgrowing the sizing means procuring and racking more appliances rather than changing a subscription tier, and growth becomes a purchasing cycle measured in months.

Pricing, plan by plan

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

IBM QRadar

On request
  • QRadar SIEMFree
    • Event and flow processing
    • Offense management
    • Threat intelligence
  • QRadar CloudFree
    • Cloud-native deployment
    • Elastic scaling
    • Managed infrastructure
  • QRadar SuiteFree
    • SIEM + SOAR + XDR
    • Unified analyst experience
    • Federated search

Which should you pick?

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

Choose IBM QRadar if

  • You need offence model.
  • You work on Web, Api.
  • You also want network flow analysis.
IBM QRadar review

Questions people ask

Is Garden or IBM QRadar better?
Neither clearly leads. Garden starts at Free and IBM QRadar at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Garden or IBM QRadar?
Garden has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Garden and On request for IBM QRadar.
Does Garden or IBM QRadar run on more platforms?
Garden runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes. IBM QRadar runs on Web, Api.
Can I use Garden for free?
Yes. Garden has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. IBM QRadar starts at On request.
What is Garden best used for?
Garden is most often used for a platform team whose integration test suite takes longer than the coffee break and needs caching to cut the loop, an organisation with thirty or more services on kubernetes where docker-compose no longer approximates production, giving every developer an ephemeral namespace instead of queuing for one shared staging environment, running the identical build and test definition locally and in ci so failures reproduce on a laptop. Of those, a platform team whose integration test suite takes longer than the coffee break and needs caching to cut the loop and an organisation with thirty or more services on kubernetes where docker-compose no longer approximates production are not what IBM QRadar is typically brought in for.
What can Garden do that IBM QRadar cannot?
Garden covers Action graph, Shared result caching, Remote Kubernetes environments, In-cluster builds. IBM QRadar covers Offence model, Network flow analysis, Device Support Modules, Ariel query language.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

IBM QRadar: Who owns QRadar now?

It is split. IBM sold the QRadar SaaS assets to Palo Alto Networks in a deal announced in May 2024 and closed that September, and those customers are being migrated to Cortex XSIAM. IBM retains and supports the on-premises product.

Garden: Do I need Kubernetes?

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

IBM QRadar: Is QRadar being discontinued?

IBM has committed to continuing support for on-premises customers, including security updates, while offering migration assistance. The cloud product's future belongs to Palo Alto. If you are signing a multi-year term, get the support horizon written into the contract.

Garden: Does it replace my CI system?

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

IBM QRadar: How is it licensed?

By events per second for logs and flows per minute for network data, with the software or appliance sized to that rate. Add-on modules in the suite are licensed separately.

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.

IBM QRadar: What is an offence?

QRadar's term for a correlated case. Rules group related events and flows against a common indicator such as a host or user, so an analyst reviews one offence rather than the hundreds of events behind it.

IBM QRadar: Do I need a full-time engineer?

In practice yes for anything beyond a small deployment. Parser development, rule tuning and offence triage do not stop, and the most common failure mode is a well-installed QRadar that nobody has tuned since go-live.

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