Kapten vs. DIY Terraform and CI
Your own platform, without building it first.
Teams with infrastructure experience often assemble a platform from Terraform, a CI system and Kubernetes manifests. It gives full control, and it becomes a codebase someone has to maintain.
At a glance
Six questions, two answers.
Our honest read of where each option sits, including the rows where diy terraform and ci comes out ahead.
| Dimension | Kapten | DIY Terraform and CI | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership of infra and data | High | High | Even |
| Setup effort (lower is better) | Medium | High | Kapten |
| Operational load on your team (lower is better) | Medium | High | Kapten |
| Control | Medium | High | DIY Terraform and CI |
| Speed to first deploy | Medium | Low | Kapten |
| Scaling path | High | High | Even |
The short answer
If you have platform engineers and specific requirements that no product fits, building it yourself is the right call and gives you complete control. Kapten is for teams that want the same standard building blocks in their own account without first spending months writing and maintaining the glue.
Side by side
DIY Terraform and CI and Kapten, point by point.
| Topic | DIY Terraform and CI | Kapten |
|---|---|---|
| Control | Complete: every resource and pipeline step is yours to design. | Opinionated defaults on standard components, in your account. |
| Time to production | Weeks to months for networking, cluster, CI, secrets and observability. | A guided path from connecting the account to a first deployment. |
| Ongoing maintenance | Module upgrades, provider changes, state and pipeline drift are yours. | Kapten maintains the foundation it provisions. |
| Knowledge | Concentrated in whoever wrote it. | Encoded in the platform and visible on the canvas. |
| Review of changes | Terraform plans and pull requests. | Plans with cost and risk notes, approved per change. |
| Standard tooling | Yes. | Yes: Kubernetes and managed cloud services, no proprietary runtime. |
| Agent access | Whatever you wire up; often raw credentials. | A scoped MCP server with permission tiers. |
| Cost of the platform | Engineering time, mostly invisible on the bill. | Kapten’s subscription, plus your cloud usage. |
| Edge cases | Anything is possible. | Supported patterns first; unusual setups confirmed during onboarding. |
| Leaving | Nothing to leave. | Revoke the role; resources remain in your account. |
Choose diy terraform and ci if
- You have platform or SRE engineers with time to build and maintain it.
- Your requirements are unusual enough that no opinionated platform fits.
- You already have a working setup and the team that wrote it.
Choose Kapten if
- Your engineers should spend their time on the product.
- You want standard infrastructure in your account without writing it all.
- You want plans, approvals and an audit trail for agent-driven changes.
A few practical questions.
Can I keep my existing Terraform?
Resources outside what Kapten provisions stay yours to manage. Share your current setup during onboarding so we can agree the boundary between the two.
Is it lock-in?
The infrastructure is standard and lives in your account. If you leave, your team takes over operating it with the tools of their choice.
Other comparisons
Weighing something else?
- 01
Kapten vs. a traditional PaaS
Same push-to-deploy simplicity, but the infrastructure lives in your own cloud account.
Explore Kapten vs. a traditional PaaS - 02
Kapten vs. hiring your first SRE
When a platform can defer the hire, and when you genuinely need a person.
Explore Kapten vs. hiring your first SRE - 03
Kapten vs. a coding agent with cloud credentials
Why giving your assistant raw cloud keys is not the same as giving it an SRE crew.
Explore Kapten vs. a coding agent with cloud credentials
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