Machine Learning · head to head
Seldon vs Teleport
Seldon
Machine Learning
Kubernetes model serving whose current version is licensed under the Business Source Licence
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Teleport
Cybersecurity
Certificate-based access to servers, Kubernetes, databases and apps, replacing shared credentials and VPNs
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Seldon has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Seldon seldon Core v2 is under the Business Source Licence rather than Apache 2.0, so production use requires a commercial agreement, and a team that evaluated it believing it was open source discovers the licence is the blocker exactly when the project is ready to ship.; Teleport pricing is not published and is described as active users plus protected resources, so an autoscaling estate cannot forecast the bill and finance teams discover the true cost only after the first true-up.
- They diverge on capability: Seldon covers Kubernetes custom resources, Teleport covers Short-lived certificates.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Seldon and Teleport actually diverge.
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 Seldon
- Kubernetes custom resources
- Inference graphs
- Traffic strategies
- Open Inference Protocol
- Alibi Explain
- Alibi Detect
- Kafka-backed pipelines in v2
- Commercial control plane
Only in Teleport
- Short-lived certificates
- Protocol coverage
- Session recording and replay
- Access Requests
- Device Trust
- Identity provider integration
- Machine identity
- FIPS and FedRAMP builds
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Seldon
- Serving an ensemble or a multi-stage inference path as one versioned deployment rather than as a chain of separate servicesnot Teleport
- Running genuine production experiments where a share of live traffic goes to a candidate model and the results are comparednot Teleport
- Regulated environments needing explanations and drift monitoring attached to the served model rather than bolted on laternot Teleport
- Organisations with an established Kubernetes platform team who want serving expressed as manifests under existing deployment controlsnot Teleport
Teleport
- Removing long-lived SSH keys and shared database passwords so that offboarding an engineer takes one action in the identity providernot Seldon
- Producing session recordings and per-user database audit trails as direct evidence for SOC 2 or FedRAMPnot Seldon
- Giving contractors or on-call engineers time-boxed, approved access to production instead of standing admin rightsnot Seldon
- Replacing a flat VPN with per-resource authorisation across servers, Kubernetes and internal web appsnot Seldon
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Seldon
- Seldon Core v2 is under the Business Source Licence rather than Apache 2.0, so production use requires a commercial agreement, and a team that evaluated it believing it was open source discovers the licence is the blocker exactly when the project is ready to ship.
- Core v1 remains Apache 2.0 but is in maintenance, so taking the free route means running software that receives no new development while the architecture it belongs to moves on without it.
- Version 2 is a different system rather than a newer release, with different custom resources, a scheduler component and a Kafka-based pipeline model, so migrating from v1 is a re-implementation of every deployment manifest rather than an upgrade.
- Kafka is a dependency for v2 pipelines, so an organisation that does not already operate it takes on a distributed log with its own storage, retention, rebalancing and failure modes purely in order to serve models.
- Everything assumes Kubernetes fluency and the failure modes are Kubernetes failure modes, custom resource version mismatches, an operator that will not reconcile, admission webhooks and resource limits terminating an inference pod mid-request, so it needs a platform engineer rather than a data scientist.
Teleport
- Pricing is not published and is described as active users plus protected resources, so an autoscaling estate cannot forecast the bill and finance teams discover the true cost only after the first true-up.
- The proxy is a hard dependency on reaching production, so it needs its own high availability deployment and a tested break-glass path or an outage in Teleport becomes an outage in your ability to respond to outages.
- The open source Community Edition omits Access Requests, Device Trust and the FIPS builds, which are exactly the controls an auditor asks about, so the free tier rarely survives a compliance review.
- Self-hosting means running and upgrading a certificate authority and its backing store, and Teleport releases frequently enough that upgrade work becomes a standing operational commitment.
- Coverage across protocols is uneven in depth, so teams with legacy systems, unusual databases or bespoke network appliances find gaps that still require the old VPN to remain in place alongside it.
Pricing, plan by plan
Seldon
Free- Seldon CoreFree
- Open source
- Kubernetes deployment
- Model serving
- Seldon DeployFree
- Enterprise features
- GUI
- Monitoring
Teleport
On request- Teleport Community Edition$undefined/year
- Open source, self-hosted
- SSH, Kubernetes, database and app access
- Session recording
- Teleport Enterprise$undefined/year
- Cloud-hosted or self-hosted
- Access Requests and approval workflow
- Device Trust and hardware key enforcement
Which should you pick?
Choose Seldon if
- You need kubernetes custom resources.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux.
- You also want inference graphs.
Choose Teleport if
- You need short-lived certificates.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- You also want protocol coverage.
Questions people ask
- Is Seldon or Teleport better?
- Neither clearly leads. Seldon starts at Free and Teleport at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Seldon or Teleport?
- Seldon has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Seldon and On request for Teleport.
- Does Seldon or Teleport run on more platforms?
- Seldon runs on Linux. Teleport runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- Can I use Seldon for free?
- Yes. Seldon has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Teleport starts at On request.
- What is Seldon best used for?
- Seldon is most often used for serving an ensemble or a multi-stage inference path as one versioned deployment rather than as a chain of separate services, running genuine production experiments where a share of live traffic goes to a candidate model and the results are compared, regulated environments needing explanations and drift monitoring attached to the served model rather than bolted on later, organisations with an established kubernetes platform team who want serving expressed as manifests under existing deployment controls. Of those, serving an ensemble or a multi-stage inference path as one versioned deployment rather than as a chain of separate services and running genuine production experiments where a share of live traffic goes to a candidate model and the results are compared are not what Teleport is typically brought in for.
- What can Seldon do that Teleport cannot?
- Seldon covers Kubernetes custom resources, Inference graphs, Traffic strategies, Open Inference Protocol. Teleport covers Short-lived certificates, Protocol coverage, Session recording and replay, Access Requests.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Seldon: Is Seldon open source?
Partly, and this is the thing to check before you build on it. Core v1 is Apache 2.0 but in maintenance. Core v2 was moved to the Business Source Licence in 2024, which allows evaluation but not unlicensed production use. Verify the current licence of each component you intend to run, including MLServer and the Alibi libraries.
Teleport: Is the open source edition usable in production?
Yes, but it lacks Access Requests, Device Trust and FIPS builds, which most compliance programmes end up requiring.
Seldon: What is the difference between v1 and v2?
Architecture, not just version number. v2 introduces a scheduler, a different set of custom resources and Kafka-backed pipelines. Manifests, mental model and operations all change, so treat a move as a project.
Teleport: How is it priced?
Not publicly. The vendor prices on active users and protected resources and provides a quote after a sales conversation.
Seldon: Do I need Kubernetes?
Yes. It is a Kubernetes-native system and there is no meaningful deployment without a cluster and someone competent to run it.
Teleport: What happens if Teleport goes down?
Nobody reaches the resources behind it, so you need a highly available deployment and a documented break-glass procedure.
Seldon: What is MLServer?
Seldon's Python inference server implementing the Open Inference Protocol, usable inside Seldon deployments or on its own. Check its current licence alongside Core's, since the company has moved projects onto the Business Source Licence.
Teleport: Does it replace our VPN?
For anything you put behind it, yes. Legacy systems and appliances it does not support will keep the VPN alive.
Seldon: Do I have to run Kafka?
For v2 pipelines, yes. If you only need single models served, that dependency is a large amount of infrastructure for the benefit, and a simpler serving layer may be the better answer.
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