Side by side
Amazon EC2 vs Garden
Both stand on container build tools. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
EC2 offers a wide choice of cloud compute configurations, storage options, and scaling policies. Review instance-specific billing and trial limits before estimating usage costs.
Visit Amazon EC2
Pick Garden if your team runs Kubernetes workloads and needs reproducible development and testing workflows with dependency-aware caching. Its free tier provides a way to start, but teams needing higher cache limits, more build minutes, or more layer caching may need the Team plan. Look elsewhere if local service builds cannot use a local Kubernetes installation.
Visit GardenThe facts
| Amazon EC2 | Garden | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Runs on | Android, API, iPhone, Linux, Mac, Web, Windows | API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Team: $50 per user a month |
| Plans published | 7 | 4 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | aws.amazon.com | garden.io |
| On container build tools | #3 of 34 | #1 of 34 |
Amazon EC2: what it does well
- More than 1,000 instance types across three processor families.
- Auto Scaling supports dynamic and predictive policies.
- Offers persistent block and shared file storage options.
- AWS states a 99.99% availability SLA commitment per Region.
- Basic AWS Support is included for all AWS customers.
What to know first
- Eligible per-second billing has a 60-second minimum.
- Surplus CPU credits can incur charges on the T4g trial.
- Customers remain responsible for applicable compliance requirements.
Garden: what it does well
- Creates production-like development, testing, and CI environments on demand.
- Graph-aware caching skips unchanged images and tests.
- YAML workflows are designed to work across developer machines and CI.
- Plugins cover Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Pulumi, and local scripts.
- Supports Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use.
What to know first
- Free tier limits build minutes, cache hits, and cache retention.
- Local service builds require a local Kubernetes installation.
- The Pulumi plugin is experimental.
- Git 2.14 or newer is required.
Alternatives to Amazon EC2 Alternatives to Garden The whole list