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Cloud · head to head

Nomad vs Qovery

Nomad logo

Nomad

Cloud

Flexible workload orchestration

From
Free
Rated
-
Qovery logo

Qovery

Cloud

Deployment platform that provisions and operates Kubernetes inside your own cloud account

From
On request
Rated
-

The short version

  • Only Nomad has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Nomad nomad 1.7.0 and later is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 with IBM Corporation as licensor, not an OSI open source licence; Qovery no plan publishes a price, deployment minute overage rates are not disclosed, and there is a 14 day trial rather than a free tier, so you cannot budget or compare against alternatives without going through sales.
  • They diverge on capability: Nomad covers Container orchestration, Qovery covers Bring your own cloud.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Nomad and Qovery actually diverge.

Attributes where Nomad and Qovery differ
AttributeNomadQovery
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelopen-sourcequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Windows, Mac, CloudWeb, CLI, REST API, Kubernetes
Founded2015Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cloud).

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 Nomad

  • Container orchestration
  • Job scheduling
  • Multi-cloud support
  • Auto-scaling
  • Service discovery
  • Rolling deployments
  • Monitoring integration
  • High availability

Only in Qovery

  • Bring your own cloud
  • Preview environments
  • Cluster lifecycle
  • Terraform provider
  • MCP server
  • Policy as code

What people use each for

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

Nomad

  • Container and workload orchestration across infrastructurenot Qovery
  • Multi-region application deploymentnot Qovery
  • Flexible scheduling for batch jobs and servicesnot Qovery

Qovery

  • A regulated business that must keep application data inside its own AWS account but has nobody to build a deployment platformnot Nomad
  • Giving twenty engineers preview environments per pull request without writing and maintaining Terraform and Helm by handnot Nomad
  • Standardising deployment across AWS and GCP when acquisitions have left the organisation on two cloudsnot Nomad
  • Replacing a managed platform when data residency rules put every hosted option out of reachnot Nomad

Where each one falls short

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

Nomad

  • Nomad 1.7.0 and later is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 with IBM Corporation as licensor, not an OSI open source licence
  • The Additional Use Grant forbids offering Nomad to third parties on a hosted or embedded basis in a paid product that competes with IBM's paid versions
  • Each version converts to MPL 2.0 only four years after that version is published
  • Resource quotas, Sentinel policies and audit logging sit in a Governance and Policy add-on module that is separate from the Enterprise base platform package
  • Multi-region deployments, multiple Vault namespaces and Nomad Autopilot advanced server management require Nomad Enterprise

Qovery

  • No plan publishes a price, deployment minute overage rates are not disclosed, and there is a 14 day trial rather than a free tier, so you cannot budget or compare against alternatives without going through sales.
  • The GPL-3.0 engine and console do not constitute a self-hostable product, because the control plane and API are closed and the self-hosted option is gated behind Enterprise, so the open licence gives you no exit if the company changes direction.
  • Qovery provisions managed Kubernetes into your account, which means the cloud bill sits on top of the licence and Qovery initiates control plane and ingress controller upgrades on infrastructure your team is accountable for.
  • The company repositioned to agentic infrastructure in June 2026 and now ships a deployment platform, a browser development portal and autonomous coding agents concurrently, so a buyer of the deployment product is not at the centre of the roadmap.
  • Team and Business are capped at two and three connected clusters with fixed 4 vCPU CI runners and no single sign-on on Team, which pushes teams of moderate size onto quoted Enterprise pricing earlier than the plan names imply.

Pricing, plan by plan

Nomad

Free
  • Open SourceFree
    • Workload orchestration
    • Multi-cloud
    • Flexible scheduling

Qovery

On request
  • Team$undefined/year
    • Billed on usage with no published rate card
    • 10 users, up to 100 environments, 2 connected clusters
    • 5,000 deployment minutes and 7 day audit logs
  • Business$undefined/year
    • Billed on usage with no published rate card
    • 20 users, up to 250 environments, 3 connected clusters
    • 10,000 deployment minutes and 30 day audit logs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom users, environments and clusters
    • Self-hosted or air-gapped control plane
    • On-premises and bring-your-own-Kubernetes

Which should you pick?

Choose Nomad if

  • You need container orchestration.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, Mac, Cloud.
  • You also want job scheduling.

Choose Qovery if

  • You need bring your own cloud.
  • You work on Web, CLI, REST API, Kubernetes.
  • You also want preview environments.

Questions people ask

Is Nomad or Qovery better?
Neither clearly leads. Nomad starts at Free and Qovery at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Nomad or Qovery?
Nomad has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Nomad and On request for Qovery.
Does Nomad or Qovery run on more platforms?
Nomad runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, Cloud. Qovery runs on Web, CLI, REST API, Kubernetes.
Can I use Nomad for free?
Yes. Nomad has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Qovery starts at On request.
What is Nomad best used for?
Nomad is most often used for container and workload orchestration across infrastructure, multi-region application deployment, flexible scheduling for batch jobs and services. Of those, container and workload orchestration across infrastructure and multi-region application deployment are not what Qovery is typically brought in for.
What can Nomad do that Qovery cannot?
Nomad covers Container orchestration, Job scheduling, Multi-cloud support, Auto-scaling. Qovery covers Bring your own cloud, Preview environments, Cluster lifecycle, Terraform provider.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Nomad: Is HashiCorp Nomad free?

HashiCorp Nomad is open source and free to use. Commercial enterprise support and hosting options may be available through HashiCorp, but the core product is free.

Source
Qovery: Does Qovery run my applications on its own servers?

No. It provisions and operates Kubernetes inside your AWS, GCP, Azure or Scaleway account, so compute and data stay with your cloud provider and that bill is entirely separate from the Qovery licence.

Nomad: Does HashiCorp Nomad have a pricing model?

Nomad is open source software with no published pricing tiers. HashiCorp offers commercial hosting and support for their products on a usage-based or custom pricing model, but Nomad itself is free to download and deploy.

Source
Qovery: Can I self-host Qovery?

Only on Enterprise. The deployment engine and console are GPL-3.0, but the control plane is closed source and the self-hosted and air-gapped deployments are commercial Enterprise features.

Nomad: What is HashiCorp's pricing model for enterprise Nomad?

HashiCorp offers flexible pricing for enterprise Nomad support including pay-as-you-go (PAYG) billing with no long-term commitment, flex plans with preferred pricing, and enterprise self-managed plans. Contact HashiCorp sales for custom quotes.

Source
Qovery: What does it cost?

Qovery does not publish a rate card. Team and Business are billed on usage and quoted through sales, and Enterprise is fully custom. There is a 14 day trial with no card required.

Qovery: What survives if I stop paying?

The Kubernetes cluster and the workloads keep running in your cloud account, but you lose the console, the deployment pipeline, preview environments and every process built on top of them.

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