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Developer Tools · head to head

Garden vs Very Good Security

Garden logo

Garden

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Very Good Security logo

Very Good Security

Cybersecurity

Tokenisation proxy that keeps card and personal data out of your own systems and out of PCI scope

From
$1000/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.; Very Good Security vGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • They diverge on capability: Garden covers Action graph, Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Garden and Very Good Security actually diverge.

Attributes where Garden and Very Good Security differ
AttributeGardenVery Good Security
Starting priceFree$1000/month
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, macOS, Windows, KubernetesWeb, API
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 Very Good Security

  • Aliasing proxy
  • PCI scope reduction
  • Network tokenisation
  • Processor optionality
  • Card issuing data
  • Vault and access controls
  • Data residency options
  • Compliance artefacts

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

Very Good Security

  • A marketplace facing its first PCI DSS Level 1 assessment that wants to keep card data off its own estate rather than harden a dozen servicesnot Garden
  • A merchant negotiating with a second acquirer that needs card credentials portable so the negotiation is real rather than theoreticalnot Garden
  • A fintech collecting bank account and identity documents that wants sensitive fields absent from logs, backups and analytics warehouses by constructionnot Garden
  • A card issuer that must display a full PAN in its own mobile app without the app or its backend touching cardholder datanot 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.

Very Good Security

  • VGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • Token portability is the whole selling point yet leaving VGS means migrating tokens back out, a project the vendor has no incentive to streamline, so the lock-in you removed from your acquirer partly moves to VGS.
  • Entry pricing at around one thousand US dollars a month is real money for a pre-revenue fintech, and it buys volume-limited throughput, so cost scales with exactly the growth that made you buy it.
  • Scope reduction is not scope elimination: your QSA still assesses how you integrate, and teams regularly discover that a support tool or an internal admin screen pulled plaintext back in and dragged systems into scope again.
  • Proxy-based interception constrains how you design request flows, and non-standard payloads, streaming uploads or binary formats often need custom routing rules that make debugging production issues noticeably harder.

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

Very Good Security

$1000/month
  • Starter$1000/month
    • Aliasing proxy
    • Vault storage
    • PCI scope reduction
  • Growth$undefined/month
    • Network tokenisation
    • Multiple processors
    • Data residency options
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom vault architecture
    • Dedicated support and SLA
    • Contractual compliance coverage

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 Very Good Security if

  • You need aliasing proxy.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want pci scope reduction.
Very Good Security review

Questions people ask

Is Garden or Very Good Security better?
Neither clearly leads. Garden starts at Free and Very Good Security at $1000/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Garden or Very Good Security?
Garden has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Garden and $1000/month for Very Good Security.
Does Garden or Very Good Security run on more platforms?
Garden runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes. Very Good Security runs on Web, API.
Can I use Garden for free?
Yes. Garden has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Very Good Security starts at $1000/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 Very Good Security is typically brought in for.
What can Garden do that Very Good Security cannot?
Garden covers Action graph, Shared result caching, Remote Kubernetes environments, In-cluster builds. Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy, PCI scope reduction, Network tokenisation, Processor optionality.

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.

Very Good Security: Does VGS make me PCI compliant?

No. It removes cardholder data from your systems so your assessment covers a far smaller boundary, but you still complete an assessment and your integration is part of it.

Garden: Do I need Kubernetes?

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

Very Good Security: Can I move to another processor without re-collecting cards?

Yes, that is a core reason people buy it. The vault reveals stored credentials to whichever processor you route to.

Garden: Does it replace my CI system?

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

Very Good Security: What does it cost?

Published entry pricing is about one thousand US dollars per month; growth and enterprise tiers are quoted.

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.

Very Good Security: Is it only for card data?

No. The proxy handles any sensitive field, including bank details, national identifiers and documents, though payments is where the product is now focused.

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