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Developer Tools · head to head

Garden vs Qualys VMDR

Garden logo

Garden

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Qualys VMDR logo

Qualys VMDR

Cybersecurity

Cloud-delivered vulnerability management licensed per asset, using scanner appliances and a lightweight agent.

From
$3/month
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.; Qualys VMDR licensing is per asset and each capability is its own subscription, so patch management, endpoint detection, web application scanning, container security and policy compliance are separate line items, and the platform demonstrated in a proof of concept is rarely the platform in the quote.
  • They diverge on capability: Garden covers Action graph, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Garden and Qualys VMDR actually diverge.

Attributes where Garden and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributeGardenQualys VMDR
Starting priceFree$3/month
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feesubscription
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, macOS, Windows, KubernetesWeb, Cloud, Api
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity
FoundedUnknown1999

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 Qualys VMDR

  • Cloud Agent
  • Scanner appliances
  • Authenticated scanning
  • TruRisk scoring
  • Asset inventory
  • Patch Management
  • Cloud connectors
  • Container sensor

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 Qualys VMDR
  • An organisation with thirty or more services on Kubernetes where docker-compose no longer approximates productionnot Qualys VMDR
  • Giving every developer an ephemeral namespace instead of queuing for one shared staging environmentnot Qualys VMDR
  • Running the identical build and test definition locally and in CI so failures reproduce on a laptopnot Qualys VMDR

Qualys VMDR

  • A hybrid workforce where scheduled network scans miss most laptops and continuous agent-based assessment is the only way to get real coveragenot Garden
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot Garden
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot Garden
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot 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.

Qualys VMDR

  • Licensing is per asset and each capability is its own subscription, so patch management, endpoint detection, web application scanning, container security and policy compliance are separate line items, and the platform demonstrated in a proof of concept is rarely the platform in the quote.
  • Ephemeral cloud instances consume asset entitlement until they age out of inventory, so an autoscaling group that creates and destroys hosts hourly can burn licence capacity on machines that existed for minutes, and controlling that means tuning purge policies rather than tuning the cloud.
  • Authenticated scanning produces materially better results than unauthenticated, but it requires storing and rotating privileged credentials for every target platform, which is a security project in its own right, and teams that skip it receive reports full of unconfirmed potential findings that nobody trusts.
  • The console is a set of modules with separate interfaces, search syntaxes and report engines, so an analyst moving between vulnerability management, policy compliance and web application scanning learns each one, and cross-module reporting usually ends in a spreadsheet or a script against the API.
  • The tool surfaces findings far faster than any organisation can remediate them, and it does not solve the ownership problem: without an agreed prioritisation policy and a named owner in IT operations, a first scan producing tens of thousands of findings becomes a dashboard that everyone learns to ignore.

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

Qualys VMDR

$3/month
  • VMDR$3/month
    • Per asset
    • Vulnerability scanning
    • Detection
  • VMDR+$5/month
    • All VMDR features
    • Advanced analytics
    • Cloud integration
  • VMDR Complete$7/month
    • All VMDR+ features
    • Threat intel
    • Response automation

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 Qualys VMDR if

  • You need cloud agent.
  • You work on Web, Cloud, Api.
  • You also want scanner appliances.
Qualys VMDR review

Questions people ask

Is Garden or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. Garden starts at Free and Qualys VMDR at $3/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Garden or Qualys VMDR?
Garden has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Garden and $3/month for Qualys VMDR.
Does Garden or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
Garden runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
Can I use Garden for free?
Yes. Garden has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Qualys VMDR starts at $3/month.
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 Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can Garden do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
Garden covers Action graph, Shared result caching, Remote Kubernetes environments, In-cluster builds. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

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.

Qualys VMDR: Agent or scanner: which do I need?

Usually both. The agent covers endpoints and servers you control and gives continuous data; scanners cover devices you cannot install an agent on, such as network gear, printers and appliances, and provide the external perimeter view.

Garden: Do I need Kubernetes?

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

Qualys VMDR: Does it patch as well as detect?

Yes, through the Patch Management module, which is a separate subscription using the same agent. Core VMDR detects and prioritises but does not deploy fixes.

Garden: Does it replace my CI system?

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

Qualys VMDR: How are assets counted for licensing?

By the number of assets in inventory, which includes cloud instances and containers depending on the modules in use. Short-lived cloud assets count until they are purged, so purge settings directly affect what you consume.

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.

Qualys VMDR: Can I keep the data in a specific region?

Yes. Qualys operates several regional platform instances and you choose which one your subscription lives on. Moving between them later is not trivial, so decide before onboarding.

Qualys VMDR: Does it scan web applications?

Web Application Scanning is a separate module licensed per application, not part of core VMDR, and it is a dynamic scanner with the usual limits around authenticated flows in single-page applications.

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