Kyverno
7.7#1 in cloud governance softwareFree planFree planWebAPILinuxmacOS
VisitKyverno vs Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper
Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper
7.2#3 in kubernetes security softwareFree planFree planAPILinuxSelf-hosted
VisitWhat both publish
| Fact | Kyverno | Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | The Kyverno CLI validates and tests policies against manifests before deployment and runs standalone or as a kubectl plugin. | The project documents the gator command-line interface for validating workload resources and policies. |
| Installation | Kyverno supports Helm and YAML installation, with Helm recommended for production customization and upgrades. | Installation supports prebuilt release images, development images, locally built images, and Helm-based deployment. |
| Licence | The project is open source under the Apache License 2.0. | The Gatekeeper repository is licensed under Apache-2.0. |
| Mutation | Mutation rules modify matching resources using strategic-merge patches or RFC 6902 JSON patches. | Mutation resources can change matching Kubernetes objects during admission before validation evaluates the final object. |
| Purpose | Kyverno is a Kubernetes-native policy engine for defining and enforcing policy as code. | Gatekeeper is a validating and mutating Kubernetes webhook that enforces CRD-based policies evaluated by Open Policy Agent. |
| Rating on TrustRadius | No overall score because there are not enough ratings, from 1 review | 8.7 out of 10 from 6 reviews, but the page identifies this as a contract and vendor-management SaaS product rather than OPA Gatekeeper. |
Kyverno plans
- KyvernoFree
- Open-source coreFree
Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper plans
- GatekeeperFree
- Open-source GatekeeperFree
Pick Kyverno if…
Kyverno is intended for platform engineering teams managing security, compliance, automation, and governance through policy as code. It suits teams working with Kubernetes clusters and policy checks in CI pipelines.
Pick Open Policy Agent Gatekeeper if…
Gatekeeper suits teams managing Kubernetes clusters that need policy enforcement, mutation or recurring audits of existing resources. It is self-hosted and requires cluster-admin permissions to install.