Side by side
Cloud Native Buildpacks Lifecycle vs kpack
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.
Free plan LinuxSelf-hosted
Cloud Native Buildpacks Lifecycle provides a structured, containerized way to assemble OCI images from source and buildpacks. Its caching, rebasing, security controls, and SBOM support suit cloud-native build pipelines.
Visit Cloud Native Buildpacks Lifecycle Free plan APISelf-hosted
kpack provides declarative, daemonless image builds and automatic rebuilds within Kubernetes. Check the registry constraint and installation requirements before adopting it.
Visit kpackThe facts
| Cloud Native Buildpacks Lifecycle | kpack | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | Linux, Self-hosted | API, Self-hosted |
| Lowest paid plan | Not published | Free or on request |
| Plans published | None | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | buildpacks.io | github.com |
| On container build tools | #16 of 34 | #20 of 34 |
Cloud Native Buildpacks Lifecycle: what it does well
- Builds without requiring a Dockerfile
- Uses five defined image-build phases
- Supports image rebasing without an application rebuild
- Generates SBOMs in three listed formats
- Supports multi-architecture builds
What to know first
- Must run inside a containerized environment
- Several phases require registry or daemon access
- Registry credentials or a Docker socket may be needed
- It is a developer-focused lifecycle component
kpack: what it does well
- Automatically rebuilds images after relevant changes.
- Supports volume-based and registry-based caching.
- Kubernetes secrets can provide publishing credentials.
- Free and open source under Apache-2.0.
What to know first
- Requires Kubernetes 1.22 or later.
- Installation requires cluster-admin permissions.
- Additional image tags must use the configured registry.
- SSH host key checking is disabled by default.
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