Developer Tools · head to head
Garden vs Portworx
Garden
Developer Tools
Kubernetes development and testing automation with shared caching, now owned by Incredibuild
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Portworx
Cloud
Kubernetes-native storage and data services, priced by the node hour
- From
- $0.33/node hour
- Rated
- -
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.; 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: Garden covers Action graph, Portworx covers Container-native volumes.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Garden and Portworx actually diverge.
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 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.
Garden
- A platform team whose integration test suite takes longer than the coffee break and needs caching to cut the loopnot Portworx
- An organisation with thirty or more services on Kubernetes where docker-compose no longer approximates productionnot Portworx
- Giving every developer an ephemeral namespace instead of queuing for one shared staging environmentnot Portworx
- Running the identical build and test definition locally and in CI so failures reproduce on a laptopnot Portworx
Portworx
- Running a production PostgreSQL or Cassandra cluster on Kubernetes and needing the data to survive node lossnot Garden
- A platform team offering self-service databases to developers on an internal Kubernetes platformnot Garden
- Failing over stateful applications between clusters in different regions as a disaster recovery positionnot Garden
- An OpenShift estate where the built-in storage option does not meet the availability requirement for stateful setsnot 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.
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
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
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 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.
Choose Portworx if
- You need container-native volumes.
- You work on Linux.
- You also want failure domain placement.
Questions people ask
- Is Garden or Portworx better?
- Neither clearly leads. Garden 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, Garden or Portworx?
- Garden has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Garden and $0.33/node hour for Portworx.
- Does Garden or Portworx run on more platforms?
- Garden runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes. Portworx runs on Linux.
- Can I use Garden for free?
- Yes. Garden has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portworx starts at $0.33/node hour.
- 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 Portworx is typically brought in for.
- What can Garden do that Portworx cannot?
- Garden covers Action graph, Shared result caching, Remote Kubernetes environments, In-cluster builds. Portworx covers Container-native volumes, Failure domain placement, Volume encryption, Database automation.
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.
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.
Garden: Do I need Kubernetes?
Effectively yes. Garden is built around Kubernetes environments and offers little to teams on other runtimes.
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.
Garden: Does it replace my CI system?
No. It runs inside GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or similar and speeds up what those pipelines execute.
Portworx: Is backup included?
No. Portworx Backup is a separately priced product covering Kubernetes application backup.
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.
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