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Developer Tools · head to head

OpsLevel vs Very Good Security

OpsLevel logo

OpsLevel

Developer Tools

Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and production readiness

From
On request
Free plan
No
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

  • 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.; 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: OpsLevel covers Service catalogue, 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 OpsLevel and Very Good Security actually diverge.

Attributes where OpsLevel and Very Good Security differ
AttributeOpsLevelVery Good Security
Starting priceOn request$1000/month
Pricing modelquotePer month
PlatformsWebWeb, API
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity

Identical on both: free tier (No), 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 OpsLevel

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

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.

OpsLevel

  • A platform team that needs to prove every production service has a named owner and an on-call rota before an auditnot Very Good Security
  • Driving a fleet-wide migration such as a runtime upgrade across 400 services with a deadline and visible progressnot Very Good Security
  • Giving developers a paved road to create a new service from a template without waiting on the platform teamnot Very Good Security
  • An organisation where an incident took an hour to route because nobody could identify the owning teamnot 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 OpsLevel
  • A merchant negotiating with a second acquirer that needs card credentials portable so the negotiation is real rather than theoreticalnot OpsLevel
  • A fintech collecting bank account and identity documents that wants sensitive fields absent from logs, backups and analytics warehouses by constructionnot OpsLevel
  • A card issuer that must display a full PAN in its own mobile app without the app or its backend touching cardholder datanot 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.

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

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

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 OpsLevel if

  • You need service catalogue.
  • You also want scorecards and rubric.
OpsLevel 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 OpsLevel or Very Good Security better?
Neither clearly leads. OpsLevel starts at On request 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, OpsLevel or Very Good Security?
OpsLevel starts at On request and Very Good Security at $1000/month.
Does OpsLevel or Very Good Security run on more platforms?
OpsLevel runs on Web. Very Good Security runs on Web, API.
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 Very Good Security is typically brought in for.
What can OpsLevel do that Very Good Security cannot?
OpsLevel covers Service catalogue, Scorecards and rubric, Checks, Campaigns. Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy, PCI scope reduction, Network tokenisation, Processor optionality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Very Good Security: What does it cost?

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

OpsLevel: Can it run on premises?

Yes, but only on the Enterprise plan.

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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