Crossplane

The Cloud-Native Framework for Platform Engineering

Also known as
crossplane

What is Crossplane?

Crossplane is an open-source CNCF project built on Kubernetes that enables organizations to build platforms with control planes. It exposes declarative APIs that abstract infrastructure complexity and enable self-service for users, automation workflows, and AI systems.

Independently observed

Crossplane pricing

We don't have Crossplane's full plan breakdown yet (its pricing page resisted automated reading). Here's what we could confirm. Always check live pricing for exact numbers.

What Crossplane does

The capabilities that matter for infrastructure as code tools, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.

Core
Paradigm
Declarative DSL
Language
-
Portability
Multicloud / cloud-agnostic
Architecture
State management
Self-managed
Extensibility
Pluggable provider ecosystem
Governance
Policy as code
Ops
Drift detection
-
GitOps continuous reconciliation
Deployment
Managed SaaS offering
-
Hosting
Self-hosted only
Adoption
Import existing resources
Licensing
Open-source engine
Ecosystem
CNCF maturity
-
Independently observed

Platform & deployment

Independently observed
Deployment
  • Self-hosted

Crossplane alternatives

Other infrastructure as code tools we track, ranked by the same independent score.

Independent · unbought · dated

The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence

Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Crossplane, not the verdict.

Balanced composite 74 / 100
low · 14%
Signal contributions to the composite score
SignalScoreWeightContributionEvidence
Capabilities8116.001298.4
Github Activity5718.001023.5
Price Level1006.00600.0
Github Stars775.00384.4
Reliability08.000.0-
Integrations08.000.0-
Release Cadence010.000.0-
Security Posture013.000.0-
Package Downloads026.000.0-
Pricing Transparency08.000.0-
Stackoverflow Activity012.000.0-

Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.

All data & sourcesshow ↓

Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.

Activity

AttributeValueEvidence
Commits last 30d63mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 65%

Adoption

AttributeValueEvidence
Github stars11,896highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90%

Features

AttributeValueEvidence
Capabilities{"hosting":"self","paradigm":"declarative_dsl","multicloud":true,"policy_as_code":true,"import_existing":true,"state_management":"self_managed","open_source_engine":true,"provider_ecosystem":true,"gitops_reconciliation":true}mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60%

Language

AttributeValueEvidence
PrimaryGohighsource · 2026-08-01 · 90%

License

AttributeValueEvidence
SpdxApache-2.0highsource · 2026-08-01 · 95%

Pricing

AttributeValueEvidence
Modelcommerciallowsource · 2026-08-01 · 48%
Price levelfreemediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60%