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Developer Tools · head to head

Garden vs Semperis

Garden logo

Garden

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Semperis logo

Semperis

Cybersecurity

Identity threat detection and Active Directory forest recovery for AD, Entra ID and Okta, from a privately held US vendor.

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.; Semperis scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • They diverge on capability: Garden covers Action graph, Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Garden and Semperis actually diverge.

Attributes where Garden and Semperis differ
AttributeGardenSemperis
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, macOS, Windows, KubernetesWeb
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity

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 Semperis

  • Active Directory Forest Recovery
  • Malware-free restore
  • Replication-stream monitoring
  • Automated rollback
  • Attack indicator scoring
  • Entra ID and Okta coverage
  • Purple Knight
  • Forest Druid

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

Semperis

  • An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot Garden
  • Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot Garden
  • Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot Garden
  • Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot 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.

Semperis

  • Scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • The licence buys tooling, not a proven runbook: forest recovery is only worth what your last rehearsal demonstrated, and a plan that has never been executed end to end in a lab is an untested assumption regardless of what was purchased.
  • It overlaps with backup and directory management products from Quest, Veeam, Commvault and others, so the buyer must argue internally why a dedicated product is needed alongside a backup contract that already claims to protect Active Directory.
  • Running Directory Services Protector well requires someone who understands AD internals, replication metadata and Tier 0 attack paths, and without that person the alerts on privileged changes are either ignored or auto-reverted in ways that break legitimate administration.
  • Licensing is driven by identity object counts, so directories carrying years of stale user accounts and service principals pay for objects that should have been deleted, and the cleanup project that would reduce the bill is the one nobody has time for.

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

Semperis

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.

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 Semperis if

  • You need active directory forest recovery.
  • You also want malware-free restore.
Semperis review

Questions people ask

Is Garden or Semperis better?
Neither clearly leads. Garden starts at Free and Semperis at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Garden or Semperis?
Garden has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Garden and On request for Semperis.
Does Garden or Semperis run on more platforms?
Garden runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes. Semperis runs on Web.
Can I use Garden for free?
Yes. Garden has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Semperis 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 Semperis is typically brought in for.
What can Garden do that Semperis cannot?
Garden covers Action graph, Shared result caching, Remote Kubernetes environments, In-cluster builds. Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback.

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.

Semperis: Does this replace my backups?

No. It replaces the Active Directory recovery procedure specifically. You still need backups for everything else, and the point of Semperis is that a generic system-state backup of a domain controller is a poor way to recover a forest because it restores the operating system along with whatever compromised it.

Garden: Do I need Kubernetes?

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

Semperis: Is it useful if we are cloud-only on Entra ID?

Partly. Directory Services Protector covers Entra ID and Okta for change tracking and posture, but the forest recovery product, which is the strongest reason to buy, applies to on-premises Active Directory. A genuinely cloud-only organisation should weigh it against Microsoft's own tooling.

Garden: Does it replace my CI system?

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

Semperis: Are Purple Knight and Forest Druid really free?

Yes, both are free downloads with no licence requirement, and they are widely used by organisations that are not Semperis customers. They are also, transparently, the top of the sales funnel.

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.

Semperis: How long does forest recovery actually take?

The honest answer is whatever your rehearsal took. The vendor's case is hours instead of days, and automation genuinely removes most manual steps, but the number that matters for your board is the one from a test in your own environment.

Semperis: Does it require agents on domain controllers?

It collects directory changes from the AD replication stream, which is what lets it see changes that bypass the security log. Deployment details vary by product and version, so confirm the exact architecture against your domain controller change-control rules.

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