Freedom251 › Chaos Engineering Platforms
Gremlin

What Gremlin is
Gremlin is a chaos engineering platform that helps engineering teams find failure modes, fix them, and validate reliability before failures become outages. It injects faults into services, hosts, containers, and serverless workloads so teams can examine system responses. Blast-radius controls limit experiments, and the platform can automatically halt and roll back tests if issues arise.
Teams can sequence experiments into incident scenarios, schedule them, and use GameDay Manager to prepare, run, analyze, and store results. The platform also includes dependency discovery, standardized test suites and reliability scores, disaster recovery testing, detected risks, and organization-wide benchmarking. Documented integrations include Slack, Datadog, Dynatrace, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Grafana Cloud k6, Jira, and custom webhooks. Supported environments include public clouds, Linux, Windows, Kubernetes, and on-premises deployments through self-hosted Private Edition. Gremlin states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified and encrypts data in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256. The 30-day trial is free, requires no credit card, and does not auto-convert. Platform pricing is by custom quote per service, with agents, targets, and test volume sized during the pricing conversation.
Who it suits
Gremlin is intended for SRE and platform teams assessing reliability across cloud, Kubernetes, and other supported environments. Private Edition is available for teams that cannot use SaaS.
What it does well
- Fault injection covers services, hosts, containers, and serverless workloads.
- Experiments have blast-radius controls and automatic rollback.
- GameDay Manager supports preparation, analysis, and results storage.
- Private Edition supports self-hosted deployment.
- Trial lasts 30 days and does not auto-convert.
What to know first
- Platform pricing requires a custom quote.
- Agents, targets, and test volume are sized with the customer.
- No free plan is listed.
- Standalone fault injection suite pricing requires a quote.
Limits
The free trial lasts 30 days, requires no credit card, and does not auto-convert. The paid Platform uses custom pricing, with agents, targets, and test volume sized during the pricing conversation.
Plans
| Plan | Billed and limits | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Gremlin 30-day trial | 30 days; no credit card; never auto-converts · Access to Gremlin reliability tests and Chaos Engineering experiments | Free |
| Gremlin Platform trial | 30-day free trial; no credit card; does not auto-convert · Trial availability stated on pricing page | Free |
| Gremlin Reliability Management Platform on AWS Marketplace | 12-month contract · 50 agents · unlimited reliability testing and scoring · fault injection · Failure Flags | $45,000 a year |
| Gremlin Foresight AI | Priced per team; adds to a platform license · Unlimited team members · AI token allowance · supervised resilience agents · remediation patches · closed-loop verification · MCP server/API/chat/LLM skills | On request |
| Fault injection suite (stand-alone) | Get a quote · Enterprise fault injection suite | On request |
| Professional Services | Scoped per engagement · Reliability Baseline · Peak Readiness Campaign · Continuous Reliability Roadmap · handoff training | On request |
| Fault injection suite | Get a quote · Enterprise fault-injection suite sold standalone | On request |
| Gremlin Platform | Priced per service; custom quote · Dependency discovery · fault injection · test suites · reliability scores · disaster-recovery testing · detected risks · benchmarking | On request |
As gremlin.com lists them, read 15 Oct 2026. The maker's own page has the final word.
Getting started
- Open the Gremlin product website
- Start the 30-day Gremlin Platform trial without a credit card
- Choose API, web, Linux, Windows, or self-hosted deployment access
- Connect supported environments such as AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, or on-premises systems
- Configure integrations and schedule experiments or incident scenarios
Verdict
Gremlin combines controlled fault injection with experiment planning and reliability analysis. The 30-day trial has clear terms, while ongoing platform pricing depends on a customer-specific quote and sizing.
Questions
Is there a free plan?
No. Gremlin lists a 30-day free trial instead.
How much does Gremlin cost?
The Platform is a custom quote priced per service. Agents, targets, and test volume are sized during the pricing conversation.
Can Gremlin be self-hosted?
Yes. Private Edition provides a self-hosted deployment for teams that cannot use SaaS.
Which platforms and environments are supported?
Gremlin supports API, web, Linux, Windows, and self-hosted access, plus AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and on-premises deployments.
Does Gremlin integrate with other tools?
Documented integrations include Slack, Datadog, Dynatrace, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Grafana Cloud k6, Jira, and custom webhooks.
Facts from Gremlin's own pages
- Agent installation
- The Gremlin Agent is installed on hosts, containers or Kubernetes clusters and enables the web app, REST API and CLI to run tests. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- API
- The public REST API uses the base URL https://api.gremlin.com/v1 and has an OpenAPI specification. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- API authentication
- API requests can authenticate with bearer tokens or user and team API keys, with MFA-supported login flows. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Attack types
- The fault library includes CPU, process-killer, memory, certificate-expiry and GPU experiments. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Authentication and audit
- The security page lists SAML 2, Google OAuth2, MFA for password logins, and administrator access logs in JSON format. · gremlin.com, 2 Oct 2026
- Company identity
- The site footer identifies the legal entity as Gremlin Inc. in Claymont, Delaware. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Company size
- Gartner lists Gremlin's employee range as 11–50 and its head office location as the United States. · gartner.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Compliance
- Gremlin reports ISO 27001/27017, PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 1/2/3 and SOC 2 Type II coverage for its hosted environment. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Documentation and support
- The documentation site covers installation, authentication, configuration, API reference, integrations, security, release notes and a support center. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Encryption
- The security page says data is protected in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256, with logically segregated customer data. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Experiment library
- The product includes preconfigured failure scenarios and lets teams create custom scenarios and chain multiple experiments. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Fault injection
- Experiments can target services, hosts, containers and serverless workloads, with automatic halt and rollback controls. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Founded
- Gremlin says it was founded in 2016 by Kolton Andrus, who previously built fault injection at Amazon. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Funding
- Gremlin's milestone history reports a $7.5M Series A in 2017 and an $18M Series B in 2018. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- GameDay Manager
- GameDay Manager helps plan events, stores experiment results and connects action items to Jira. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- Documented integrations include AWS, Azure, GCP, Jira and configurable REST webhooks. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Intended users
- Gremlin describes its users as SRE and platform teams, and says financial services, retail, media, and B2B SaaS companies use the product. · gremlin.com, 2 Oct 2026
- Kubernetes installation
- Kubernetes can be deployed with an automatically generated YAML file applied using kubectl; Helm is the recommended method generally. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
- License
- Gremlin's commercial reliability platform is not offered as an open-source product; a G2 reviewer specifically notes that no open-source version is available. · g2.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Limit: cost and on-premises coverage
- A G2 reviewer says multi-point experiments require a subscription, on-premises injection support is limited and the lack of an open-source edition is a drawback. · g2.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Limit: JVM injection
- The Gartner reviewer says JVM fault injection received less communication and promised capability than expected. · gartner.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Limit: learning curve and UI
- AWS and PeerSpot reviewers mention a difficult initial learning curve and request a more developer-friendly UI. · peerspot.com, 15 Oct 2026
- Limit: pricing visibility
- AWS reviewers repeatedly call Gremlin expensive and ask for clearer cost, ROI and pay-as-you-go visibility. · aws.amazon.com, 15 Oct 2026
- MCP and extensibility
- Gremlin documents an MCP server and exposes API, chat and LLM-skill access for Foresight AI. · gremlin.com, 15 Oct 2026
Where Gremlin stands on Freedom251
- Chaos Engineering Platforms#18 of 25
