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Developer Tools · head to head

OpsLevel vs Restate

OpsLevel logo

OpsLevel

Developer Tools

Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and production readiness

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Restate logo

Restate

Developer Tools

Durable execution engine in Rust with a free tier and low-latency workflows

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Restate has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: OpsLevel opsLevel does not publish prices at all, not even a starting figure, so you cannot size a budget or compare against Backstage's zero licence cost without entering a sales cycle.; Restate the runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • They diverge on capability: OpsLevel covers Service catalogue, Restate covers Durable execution.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which OpsLevel and Restate actually diverge.

Attributes where OpsLevel and Restate differ
AttributeOpsLevelRestate
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelquotePer month by durable action count
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWebLinux, macOS, Web

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

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 OpsLevel

  • Service catalogue
  • Scorecards and rubric
  • Checks
  • Campaigns
  • Self-service actions
  • Slack and Teams integration
  • Catalogue auto-enrichment
  • Deployment on request

Only in Restate

  • Durable execution
  • Virtual objects
  • Single binary runtime
  • Multi-language SDKs
  • Workflows and sagas
  • Restate Cloud

What people use each for

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

OpsLevel

  • A platform team that needs to prove every production service has a named owner and an on-call rota before an auditnot Restate
  • Driving a fleet-wide migration such as a runtime upgrade across 400 services with a deadline and visible progressnot Restate
  • Giving developers a paved road to create a new service from a template without waiting on the platform teamnot Restate
  • An organisation where an incident took an hour to route because nobody could identify the owning teamnot Restate

Restate

  • Payment or order flows where a crash between two external API calls must not double-charge or lose the ordernot OpsLevel
  • AI agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-runnot OpsLevel
  • Replacing hand-rolled retry, idempotency key and outbox code across a set of microservicesnot OpsLevel
  • A small team that wants durable workflows without operating a Temporal cluster and its databasenot OpsLevel

Where each one falls short

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

OpsLevel

  • OpsLevel does not publish prices at all, not even a starting figure, so you cannot size a budget or compare against Backstage's zero licence cost without entering a sales cycle.
  • The Standard plan caps at 50 users, which is below the size at which service ownership becomes a real problem, so most genuine buyers land on Enterprise and its unpublished pricing.
  • Scores are only as honest as the metadata teams maintain; where ownership records go stale the rubric produces confident numbers about a catalogue that no longer reflects reality, and leadership acts on them.
  • It reports on quality rather than producing it, so it can generate friction between platform teams who set the rubric and product teams who see it as a scoreboard imposed on them without extra headcount to fix the findings.
  • As a hosted product it needs read access to source control, cloud accounts and observability tooling, which is a meaningful vendor review in regulated environments; on-premises exists but only on the Enterprise tier.

Restate

  • The runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • Restate Cloud jumps from a free fifty thousand actions straight to 300 US dollars a month for twenty million, so a workload sitting at a few hundred thousand actions pays enterprise-shaped money for hobby-shaped volume.
  • It is a young project against Temporal’s established base, so hiring engineers who already know it is unrealistic and the answer to most questions is in the docs rather than on Stack Overflow.
  • The programming model requires structuring code around durable handlers and virtual objects, which is a genuine rewrite for existing services rather than a library you add.
  • The single-binary simplicity that makes small deployments cheap also means fewer operational knobs at very large scale than a system designed as separable components.

Pricing, plan by plan

OpsLevel

On request
  • Standard$undefined/year
    • Up to 50 users
    • Unlimited catalogued components
    • Scorecards, campaigns and the global rubric
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Unlimited users
    • Custom integrations
    • Customisable dashboards

Restate

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Fifty thousand durable actions per month
    • No credit card required
    • Community support
  • Starter$300/month
    • Twenty million actions per month
    • Two hundred actions per second, bursting to one thousand
    • Twenty GB storage
  • Pro$1000/month
    • Fifty million actions per month
    • Five hundred actions per second, bursting to two thousand
    • Fifty GB storage
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated volume
    • Twenty-four seven P0 support
    • 99.99 per cent SLA

Which should you pick?

Choose OpsLevel if

  • You need service catalogue.
  • You also want scorecards and rubric.
OpsLevel review

Choose Restate if

  • You need durable execution.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Web.
  • You also want virtual objects.
Restate review

Questions people ask

Is OpsLevel or Restate better?
Neither clearly leads. OpsLevel starts at On request and Restate at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, OpsLevel or Restate?
Restate has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for OpsLevel and Free for Restate.
Does OpsLevel or Restate run on more platforms?
OpsLevel runs on Web. Restate runs on Linux, macOS, Web.
Can I use Restate for free?
Yes. Restate has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. OpsLevel starts at On request.
What is OpsLevel best used for?
OpsLevel is most often used for a platform team that needs to prove every production service has a named owner and an on-call rota before an audit, driving a fleet-wide migration such as a runtime upgrade across 400 services with a deadline and visible progress, giving developers a paved road to create a new service from a template without waiting on the platform team, an organisation where an incident took an hour to route because nobody could identify the owning team. Of those, a platform team that needs to prove every production service has a named owner and an on-call rota before an audit and driving a fleet-wide migration such as a runtime upgrade across 400 services with a deadline and visible progress are not what Restate is typically brought in for.
What can OpsLevel do that Restate cannot?
OpsLevel covers Service catalogue, Scorecards and rubric, Checks, Campaigns. Restate covers Durable execution, Virtual objects, Single binary runtime, Multi-language SDKs.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

OpsLevel: How much does OpsLevel cost?

It does not publish pricing. Billing is per developer using the portal, with volume discounts, and a quote requires a sales conversation.

Restate: Is Restate open source?

The SDKs are MIT. The runtime is under a Business Source Licence, which permits self-hosting but not offering it as a competing service.

OpsLevel: How does it compare with Backstage?

Backstage has no licence fee but you staff a team to build and run it. OpsLevel is hosted with checks, campaigns and scorecards out of the box, and you pay per developer instead.

Restate: How does it compare with Temporal?

Same problem, different shape: one Rust binary with embedded storage instead of a server plus database plus workers, and lower per-step latency.

OpsLevel: Does it require writing catalogue YAML by hand?

No. It auto-discovers and enriches entries from connected systems, though teams still curate ownership and metadata.

Restate: Is there a free tier?

Yes, fifty thousand durable actions a month on Restate Cloud with no card required.

OpsLevel: Can it run on premises?

Yes, but only on the Enterprise plan.

Restate: Which languages are supported?

TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Go, Python and Rust.

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