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Spacelift vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Spacelift
Ranking in Cloud Management
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (14th)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Cloud Management
33rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (17th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Development Platforms (5th), Container Management (9th), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Spacelift is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Spacelift1.2%
VMware Tanzu Platform1.3%
Other97.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

G Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Automation of cloud infrastructure has transformed how our team manages Terraform workflows
Spacelift has other features beyond Terraform, including Ansible, Pulumi, Terragrunt, and it also helps with Kubernetes, although we haven't used it for the other tools. We have only used it for Terraform Infrastructure as Code, and it has helped us significantly. One standout feature compared to Terraform Cloud is the ability to apply policies. For example, we want to restrict engineers in our team from building servers with a particular SKU, such as in Azure, where we do not want to run servers with a SKU higher than the standard D4sv5. We can apply those policies in Spacelift, and the RBAC and access policies features are really excellent in Spacelift, which we do not find in any of the other competitor tools. The pricing is also competitive compared to Terraform Cloud. The access policy features allow us to assign specific policies since we have three environments in our company: Dev, QA, and Prod. We assign policies so that anyone can run code from Dev and QA servers, but we assign a policy for specific people, such as managers, to run code in Prod. This is a very good feature from Spacelift that we have implemented for the access policy. Spacelift has positively impacted our organization as a CI/CD tool for application deployment and development. Although we use other CI/CD tools like Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions, there wasn't a specific tool for Terraform Infrastructure as Code until Spacelift came along. It allows us to easily configure our servers and build a number of them on our cloud. While other CI/CD tools have started to include configuration features, Spacelift offers many other benefits that make it an excellent tool to use.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Spacelift is like an extension of Terraform, where everything can be visibly managed."
"After using Spacelift, I noticed a 90% reduction in time saved for repetitive infrastructure tasks, as the cloud configuration speed has doubled."
"I appreciate that I just have to connect to my AWS account with my credentials, and Spacelift handles the rest."
"Spacelift has positively impacted my organization by reducing manpower, as it reduced the efforts of resources in the team, where previously a job done by two or three engineers can now be easily managed by one engineer using Spacelift."
"Spacelift impacted our organization positively in several areas, with time-saving by eliminating the need for coordination runs, a 60 to 70% reduction in infrastructure-related incidents, and a significant drop in weekly deployment coordination from six to eight hours to roughly two hours, freeing up meaningful time for actual feature work and improvements."
"Spacelift has positively impacted our organization because we do not have to detect drift or manage Terraform basics ourselves; Spacelift handles this for us with strong governance and security policies based on GitOps principles, which saves considerable time."
"Spacelift has positively impacted my organization because it works well; it allows everybody to collaborate in the same Terraform repo without stepping on each other's toes."
"The metrics show that fewer employees are needed, money is saved based on past experiences with different cloud management or Infrastructure as Code management tools, and efficiency has improved significantly in terms of Infrastructure as Code deployment."
"We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization, and we can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications."
"We feel very good about these features."
"The support from VMware is very good."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment, and TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
 

Cons

"Pricing could be a little lower to make it a very robust tool, and it can improve areas in scalability and integrate some open-source tools."
"I specifically wish to see improvements in Spacelift's user interface, making it more useful and easier for the team to understand."
"If I had to think of one area where Spacelift could improve, it would be the graph where we orchestrate, as the graph looks very complicated and complex, so perhaps it could be simplified."
"Spacelift currently lacks features that can help with complex type deployments and coordination for major deployments."
"Spacelift could be improved by implementing some of the many AI-based tools available that support a variety of tools like Pulumi, CloudFormation, OpenTofu, and Terraform."
"In the free version, there's no straightforward way to be notified once a deployment is finished."
"Synchronization can be difficult when using older and newer versions with Kubernetes and HashiCorp."
"Perhaps the learning curve could be a bit steep if someone is completely new to Spacelift and only has experience with plain Terraform."
"Having a unified dashboard to manage all infrastructure, whether it involves additional IT infrastructure or modern apps, would be highly advantageous"
"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."
"The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
"Cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue."
"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"LYNX is a managed cluster solution that takes care of specific details within a cluster, such as sequences or services. I haven't seen this feature in Tanzu Mission Control."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a bit expensive product."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spacelift?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that licensing was somewhat unclear when HashiCorp changed their own licensing.
What needs improvement with Spacelift?
It would be nice to have out-of-the-box A/B testing with Spacelift because we still use some custom features for that. Out-of-the-box A/B testing is the main thing I would like to add about the nee...
What is your primary use case for Spacelift?
We manage a lot of AWS deployments with Spacelift configs, so we have a main use case for it. We also use it for versioning and spinning up new environments. Recently we used Spacelift for deployin...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Concourse for VMware Tanzu?
The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core. Pricing varies based on commitment and volumetric, with discounts provided for long-term commitments. VMware sells directly or...
What needs improvement with Concourse for VMware Tanzu?
The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source. We can easily work with Docker, and when we compare it with OpenShift, the price is very high. We...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Visit spacelift.io/customers to see how Duolingo, Figma, Moody's, Checkout.com, 1Password, Redfin and others manage infrastructure for the AI-accelerated software era with Spacelift.
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Spacelift vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.