No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Spacelift vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

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
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (13th)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Cloud Management
32nd
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 (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Spacelift is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Spacelift1.2%
VMware Tanzu Platform1.2%
Other97.6%
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 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 impacts my organization positively by giving more agility to the teams when they are deploying, allowing us to manage the AWS resources using Spacelift, so our cloud organization improves after this implementation."
"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."
"Spacelift has positively impacted my organization by making it very easy to manage the different modules with a very clear interface."
"One key feature is the Spacelift policies, which we can attach to deployments to ensure compliance with our standards."
"Spacelift has positively impacted our organization by speeding up our deployments and easing a lot of pain with infrastructure deployments, especially because a lot of teams are working simultaneously on the same code base using the same configs."
"SpaceLift has positively impacted my organization by reducing a lot of confusion with the integration of Terraform modules, because a lot of our tooling involved direct and indirect Terraform module creations; now it is more streamlined for each and every resource that we control."
"After using Spacelift, I noticed a 90% reduction in time saved for repetitive infrastructure tasks, as the cloud configuration speed has doubled."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment, and TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
"We feel very good about these features."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."
"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
 

Cons

"If you are a small enterprise organization, below 500 people, I would not recommend it."
"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."
"I think an improvement for Spacelift would be a feature to run multiple stacks."
"There are a few areas where there is room for improvement, particularly the initial setup and onboarding experience, which has a learning curve around understanding the concept of contexts."
"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."
"Perhaps the learning curve could be a bit steep if someone is completely new to Spacelift and only has experience with plain Terraform."
"Synchronization can be difficult when using older and newer versions with Kubernetes and HashiCorp."
"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."
"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers."
"The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"Cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue."
"The biggest gap for me was just that the solution is relatively tied to Cloud Foundry. If you have anything you need to deploy outside of that, it becomes burdensome."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a bit expensive product."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"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."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Spacelift vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.