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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
6th
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
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 August 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 1.3%, up from 1.0% 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."
"Spacelift has positively impacted my organization in significant ways in terms of building infrastructure as code."
"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 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."
"I appreciate that I just have to connect to my AWS account with my credentials, and Spacelift handles the rest."
"One key feature is the Spacelift policies, which we can attach to deployments to ensure compliance with our standards."
"Knowing the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) makes it easier to use without issues."
"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."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"We never experienced any problems with scalability."
"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."
"Tazu is a developer-friendly and highly mature product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"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 support from VMware is very good."
 

Cons

"The learning curve for new users getting started with Spacelift is very steep."
"Spacelift currently lacks features that can help with complex type deployments and coordination for major deployments."
"I think an improvement for Spacelift would be a feature to run multiple stacks."
"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."
"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 is good overall, but there are little explanatory aspects, such as navigating particular stacks, that are somewhat difficult to understand for newcomers, especially regarding the process, stack setup, and variable setup for deployments."
"Synchronization can be difficult when using older and newer versions with Kubernetes and HashiCorp."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source."
"The implementation is not easy, it is very complex and can take a day or two to complete."
"We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a bit expensive product."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"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."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing 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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.