Side by side

Porter vs Substrate

Both stand on platform engineering software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

Porter

Free trial APILinuxMac+2

Porter combines application deployment with infrastructure management in the customer's cloud account. Consider the separate cloud bill and pay-per-use pricing alongside its deployment, automation, and operations features.

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Substrate

Free plan APIWeb

Substrate pairs multi-cluster operations and cost optimization with detailed access, secret, and account security controls. The free plan covers a small footprint; teams needing more clusters or members must move to a paid tier.

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The facts

	Porter	Substrate
Free plan	A free trial	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	API, Linux, Mac, Web, Windows	API, Web
Lowest paid plan	See the plans	Starter: $299 a month
Plans published	2	4
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	porter.run	substratecore.com
On platform engineering software	#23 of 31	#19 of 31

Porter: what it does well

Deploys from Git or Docker.
Supports AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Includes automatic builds and CI/CD.
Provides API audit logs.
Offers a two-week free trial.

What to know first

No free tier.
Underlying cloud costs are billed separately.
Standard pricing varies with RAM and vCPU usage.
Enterprise pricing requires contacting sales.

Substrate: what it does well

Supports AWS EKS, Google GKE, Azure AKS, and standalone Kubernetes.
Deploys workloads across multiple clusters.
AI engine offers rightsizing, spot migration, and scale-to-zero.
Secrets use AES-256 encryption at rest.
Free plan includes one BYOC cluster and basic monitoring.

What to know first

Free plan is limited to one cluster and one team member.
Starter costs $299 per month.
Growth costs $999 per month.
Enterprise pricing is custom and not listed.

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