Northflank vs Okteto (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Northflank if

• Fits if you want container hosting billed by the second
• Works for teams that want to run in their own AWS, Google Cloud or Azure account

Look elsewhere if

• Tight if you stay on Sandbox: 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database
• Watch out: SAML, SCIM and audit logging need Enterprise
• Watch out: egress is $0.06 per GB on Northflank Cloud
• Pricey if you size up, as the $12 figure is only the smallest compute plan

Pick Okteto if

• Fits if your team already runs Kubernetes and wants per-developer environments
• Makes sense if you have 5 or fewer developers and can self-host

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if you don't run Kubernetes, since every tier is self-hosted
• Tight if you need SSO or RBAC, which start at Scale with no published price
• Watch out: OpenID Connect and the SLA need Enterprise
• Watch out: Starter has no cost controls or environment templates

Northflank

• Network egress is $0.06 per GB on Northflank Cloud, and ingress is free.
• The Sandbox tier is capped at 2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database.
• SAML, SCIM and audit logging need the Enterprise plan.
• The price depends on what you run; the monthly figures on the page are for always-on compute.

Okteto

• Scale and Enterprise prices are not published; you contact the vendor.
• Starter has no SSO, RBAC, environment templates or cost controls; those need Scale.
• OpenID Connect and the SLA need Enterprise, and SAML 2.0 is listed as coming soon.
• All tiers are self-hosted; Enterprise adds a bring-your-own-cloud option.

Northflank

Bring your own cloud

Workloads can run on Northflank Cloud or in your own cloud account, where compute is billed at $0.02083 per node vCPU hour.

Per-second billing

Every resource is billed by the second, with no seat fees and unlimited users on the paid plan.

GPUs

GPUs on Northflank Cloud range from an L4 at $0.80 an hour to a B200 at $5.87 an hour, and BYOC GPUs are billed at $1.00 per GB of VRAM a month.

Databases and storage

Postgres and Redis databases are listed, with NVMe persistent disk at $0.11657 per GiB a month.

Autoscaling and RBAC

Autoscaling, role-based access control and a Platform SDK are included on pay-as-you-go.

Bill estimator

A calculator on the pricing page estimates a month's bill from a chosen mix of services, databases and sizes.

Okteto

Development environments

Self-service environments on Kubernetes with local-to-cloud code synchronization and remote debugging.

Preview environments

Shareable environments created with each pull request, and test environments that run tests directly inside them.

Agent environments

Coding agents run in their own isolated environments, with integration for coding agents on every tier.

Divert

Share one environment and deploy only the services you change, per the vendor's feature list.

Cost controls

Garbage collection and a resource manager on Scale and Enterprise; pricing is per user, never per environment.

Access and audit

Role-based access control, namespace and environment sharing, and audit logs of every action.

Northflank

• Sandbox$0

  2 services, 2 jobs and 1 database, always on with no sleeping, and up to $20 a month of resources.

• Pay as you go$12

  per month for the smallest compute plan, billed by the second

  Unlimited users, deployments and workloads. Compute is $0.01667 per vCPU hour, memory $0.00833 per GB hour; the page shows a 2 vCPU, 4 GB plan at $48 a month.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Platform fee, usage, support and SLA: your own VPC or air-gapped setup, SAML, SCIM, audit logging and a dedicated Slack channel.

Okteto

• Starter$0

  Up to 5 users, unlimited environments, self-hosted, community forum support.

• ScaleCustom

  Unlimited users, RBAC, SSO with GitHub and Google, SOC 2 Type 2, ticketing support. Priced per user; contact for pricing.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Adds OpenID Connect, an SLA, dedicated Slack support, and self-hosted or bring-your-own-cloud deployment. Contact sales.