Cycloid vs Humanitec
Updated onCompare Cycloid and Humanitec side-by-side. See how they stack up on features, pricing, and target market.
Cycloid
Cycloid provides a sustainable platform-engineering self-service portal and orchestration platform that centralizes GitOps, infra-as-code, FinOps and GreenOps for organizations.
Starts at $21 / per user / month
Has a free trial
vs
Humanitec
Humanitec provides a graph-based Platform Orchestrator, Portal, and developer-facing tooling to build enterprise Internal Developer Platforms that automate infra, standardize configs, and enable developer self-service.
Starts at $999 / per organization / month
Has a free trial
Which should you choose?
Cycloid
You want an opinionated, ready‑made internal developer portal plus platform with strong GitOps-based self‑service, built‑in FinOps/GreenOps and sustainability features, and relatively simple per‑user SaaS pricing for medium‑to‑large teams.
Humanitec
You are building or modernizing a large‑scale, often brownfield Internal Developer Platform and prioritize a graph‑based Platform Orchestrator as the backend for your own portal and CI/CD stack, with deep integrations, dynamic configuration management and AI‑ready APIs, and are willing to invest more in setup and licensing.
Typical cost comparison
Scenario: 50 developers on each platform’s lowest paid tier, billed monthly.
Cycloid
$1050 per month
Humanitec
$999 per month
Humanitec saves you $51 per month in this scenario.
Key differences
| Category | Cycloid | Humanitec | Why? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use & Target Users | Cycloid is designed so even non‑experts can consume pre‑defined stacks through a web self‑service portal with low DevOps knowledge required, while Humanitec is optimized for platform engineering teams defining golden paths and modeling complex estates, and reviewers note a meaningful learning curve. | ||
| FinOps/GreenOps & Sustainability | Cycloid makes cloud cost estimation, FinOps dashboards and GreenOps or “digital sobriety” practices first‑class features of the platform, whereas Humanitec focuses more on orchestration and relies on external tooling for cost and sustainability analytics. | ||
| Integrations, Extensibility & Ecosystem | Humanitec offers a broad library of open‑source drivers, the Score workload spec and strong integrations with portals like Backstage and common CI/IaC tools, and is widely regarded as a leading orchestrator for IDPs, while Cycloid’s integrations are solid but more centered around its own portal. | ||
| Pricing | Cycloid typically comes in cheaper for small and mid‑sized teams with per‑user SaaS pricing and even a free version, while Humanitec is usually sold as a higher‑priced, quote‑based enterprise platform starting around the low thousands per month. | ||
| Primary Focus & Architecture | Cycloid combines an out‑of‑the‑box internal developer portal with orchestration, infra‑as‑code and FinOps/GreenOps modules, whereas Humanitec focuses on a graph‑based Platform Orchestrator that standardizes infrastructure and configuration as the control plane behind your chosen portal and toolchain. |
Feature comparison
| Feature | Cycloid | Humanitec | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitOps-first / Infra-as-Code support | Both support IaC-centric workflows; Cycloid promotes a GitOps-by-design approach and OSS tools like TerraCognita and Terracost, while Humanitec consumes IaC and generates configs dynamically around Kubernetes and cloud resources. | ||
| Multi-cloud & hybrid-cloud support | Both are designed for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments, integrating with major cloud providers and existing toolchains. | ||
| Service Catalog & self-service stacks | Cycloid offers a service catalog of reusable stacks and StackForms for self-service; Humanitec enables self-service of workloads and resources defined by platform teams via Score, UI, CLI or API. | ||
| AWS Marketplace listing | Cycloid’s Sustainable Engineering Platform is listed on AWS Marketplace, whereas Humanitec’s presence there is not prominently advertised. | ||
| FinOps dashboards (cloud cost visibility) | Cycloid includes native FinOps modules with cost estimation and spend dashboards; Humanitec expects you to integrate external cost-management tools. | ||
| GreenOps / carbon footprint tracking | Cycloid emphasizes GreenOps and digital sobriety with features to track and reduce cloud carbon footprint, while Humanitec does not market built-in sustainability metrics. | ||
| Out-of-the-box Internal Developer Portal UI | Cycloid ships a unified internal developer portal plus platform, while Humanitec provides a portal but positions it mainly as one of several interfaces on top of the orchestrator. | ||
| Self-hosting / on-prem deployment option | Cycloid highlights digital sovereignty and native self-hosting; Humanitec is primarily SaaS but offers self-hosted options for some enterprise customers. | ||
| Integration with external portals (e.g., Backstage) | Cycloid can be integrated via APIs but primarily acts as its own portal, whereas Humanitec is commonly used as the backend orchestrator for portals such as Backstage. | ||
| Open-source tools / drivers | Cycloid is closed-source but publishes related OSS tools (e.g., TerraCognita, InfraMap, Terracost); Humanitec provides an open-source driver framework and the Score workload specification. | ||
| Platform Orchestrator / live resource graph | Cycloid includes orchestration but not a dedicated graph-based orchestrator layer, whereas Humanitec’s core is a graph-based Platform Orchestrator with a live resource graph of your estate. | ||
| AI-ready APIs for agents | Humanitec explicitly positions the Platform Orchestrator as AI- and agent-ready, allowing agents to provision infra within guardrails; Cycloid focuses on human self-service rather than AI agents. |
Review Consensus
Cycloid
"Cycloid’s limited but very positive public reviews (around 5.0/5 from a small sample) praise its self-service IDP plus platform and FinOps/GreenOps capabilities, though adoption and ecosystem remain more niche than bigger players. "
Based on 5 reviews
- ● Users appreciate having a unified internal developer portal and platform that simplifies self-service for infrastructure and automation.
- ● Reviewers view the FinOps and Green IT focus as a key differentiator for controlling cloud costs and aligning with sustainability goals.
- ● Support quality is rated highly, with good responsiveness despite Cycloid being a relatively small vendor.
- ● There are still relatively few public reviews compared with larger DevOps and platform-engineering tools.
- ● Ecosystem and community size are smaller than those of more established orchestrator vendors.
- ● Pricing tiers and plan details can be confusing across listings and often require talking to sales for larger deployments.
Data as of 12/19/2025
Humanitec
"Humanitec’s reviews are strongly positive (around 4.8/5 from a small but enterprise-focused sample), emphasizing its power and support quality but also noting a learning curve and enterprise-style pricing and rollout. "
Based on 6 reviews
- ● Strong capabilities for standardizing infrastructure and configuration as part of an Internal Developer Platform.
- ● Integration and deployment experience is rated highly for complex enterprise and regulated environments.
- ● Support is frequently described as responsive and helpful during implementation and optimization.
- ● Several reviewers mention a non-trivial learning curve and initial complexity in understanding concepts and wiring up the platform.
- ● Documentation needs to keep pace with the rapid expansion of features and capabilities.
- ● Pricing is not transparent publicly and is typically handled via enterprise negotiations, which can slow smaller teams.
Data as of 12/19/2025
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