Substrate

Web · API · paid plans from $299/mo

Freedom report

Two barsScore 6.4

Free tierA free tier is on its own pricing page
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely1 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

Substrate is ranked #19 of 49 in Kubernetes monitoring on Freedom251. It runs on API, Web. There is a free plan. Paid plans start at $299/mo.

Substrate plans and pricing

All plans

Free Free Free 1 BYOC cluster · 5 secrets · Community support · Basic monitoring · 1 team member substratecore.com · 4 Oct 2026

Starter $299/mo $299 per month 3 BYOC clusters · 50 secrets · 2 CI/CD integrations · 5 preview environments · 5 team members · Email support · AI cost optimization substratecore.com · 4 Oct 2026

Growth $999/mo $999 per month 10 BYOC clusters · Unlimited secrets · 10 CI/CD integrations · 25 preview environments · 25 team members · Priority support · AI cost optimization with savings sharing · Custom alert rules substratecore.com · 4 Oct 2026

Enterprise Not published Custom Unlimited clusters · Unlimited everything · Dedicated support engineer · Custom SLA (up to 99.99%) · SSO & SAML · Negotiated performance fee rates · Custom rate overrides · Audit logs & RBAC substratecore.com · 4 Oct 2026

Compared on Kubernetes monitoring

Free plan: Yes
Paid from: $299/mo
Kubernetes logs: Yes
Alerting channels: email, webhook
Managed Kubernetes support: Yes

Best Substrate alternatives

See all 20

Two bars Middleware Free tier No. 1$0.30/mo6.8 Two bars Netdata Free tier No. 2$4.50/mo6.8 Two bars Datadog Kubernetes Monitoring Free tier No. 3$1/mo6.7 One bar Dynatrace Kubernetes Monitoring Paid plans No. 4$1.40/mo6.7 Two bars Grafana Cloud Application Observability Free tier No. 5$0.03/mo6.7 Two bars Radar Free tier No. 6$149/mo6.7

The record

Product: Substrate is a control plane for managing and optimizing Kubernetes clusters, virtual machines, and databases across cloud providers.
Cost optimization: Its AI engine offers resource rightsizing, spot instance migration, and scale-to-zero optimization.
Cloud support: Substrate says it supports AWS EKS, Google GKE, Azure AKS, and standalone Kubernetes clusters.
Deployment: The platform provides multi-cluster workload deployment and real-time dashboards for cluster health, resource use, and deployment status.
Integrations: The integrations page lists GitHub, GitLab, self-hosted Git, Docker Hub, Amazon ECR, Google GCR, Azure ACR, and private OCI registries.
Log management: Substrate lists log streaming to Elasticsearch, Splunk, CloudWatch, Google Cloud Logging, and Azure Monitor.
Access controls: Security features include organization, project, and resource-level permissions, custom roles, and permission inheritance and overrides.
Secrets: The security page says secrets use AES-256 encryption at rest and support rotation, revocation, scoped access, and access logging.
Account security: The security page describes TOTP multi-factor authentication, backup codes, enforceable organization MFA policies, and configurable session expiry.
Audit and network security: Substrate says it logs API calls, configuration changes, and access events, and supports IP-based cluster firewall rules synced with cloud security groups.
Pricing model: The pricing page says tiers include monthly subscription fees and resource allocations, with per-unit overage billing beyond included amounts.
Performance fee: The pricing page lists a share of verified savings of 20% on Starter, 18% on Growth, and 15% on Enterprise, with negotiated Enterprise rates also available.
Free credits: The pricing page offers $100 in free credits with no credit card required.
Maker: The site identifies the company as Substrate Systems, Inc. and names Robert Hogan as Founder, CEO & CFO.
Price from: $299/mo

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Kubernetes Monitoring in 2026#19 of 49
Best Platform Engineering Software in 2026#16 of 30

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Sources

substratecore.com· checked 4 Oct 2026
substratecore.com/docs/integrations· checked 4 Oct 2026
substratecore.com/platform/security· checked 4 Oct 2026
substratecore.com/pricing· checked 4 Oct 2026
substratecore.com/about· checked 4 Oct 2026