# Defang vs Rivet.dev

Defang records 2,043 monthly visits with -49% month-over-month growth and Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing pricing. Rivet.dev records 21,359 monthly visits with -44.3% growth and Freemium, Contact for Pricing pricing.

| Metric | [Defang](https://openaitools.app/tool/defang) | [Rivet.dev](https://openaitools.app/tool/rivet-dev) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://defang.io | https://rivet.dev |
| Categories | AI Developer Tools, AI Agent, AI Copilot, AI Code Assistant | AI Agent, AI Workflow, AI Developer Tools, AI App Builder |
| Pricing Model | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Freemium, Contact for Pricing |
| Monthly Visits | 2,043 | 21,359 |
| MoM Growth Rate | -49% | -44.3% |
| Primary Market | United States | United States |
| Direct Visits | 800 | 10,710 |
| Review Score | 4.2 | 4.5 |
| Saved Count | 0 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Defang

Defang targets the gap between fast local prototyping and real production hosting. You describe your app with a familiar Docker Compose file, and Defang provisions the underlying cloud infrastructure in your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account. That keeps the cloud account, data, and model choices in your control instead of locking them into a vendor's hosting. The platform provides preview environments so changes — including agent-generated ones — can be reviewed before they reach production, and it offers a single deployment path shared by both people and AI agents.

The current product line has three parts. Defang Station is a hosted runtime where coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex run against your own Anthropic and OpenAI accounts, accessible from a browser. Defang Deploy is the Compose-to-cloud path described above. Defang Forge is a services engagement in which engineers work inside your codebase and cloud accounts to redesign how your team ships software, then hand the workflow back to you.

Defang frames its value around "engineering sovereignty": your advantage stays portable, observable, and yours. The site also publishes an AI-Native Maturity Model and a related assessment to help organizations see where their delivery workflow bottlenecks. It is a developer-focused tool, so expect a command-line and Git-oriented workflow rather than a no-code interface.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium-style offering with a free tier to start; paid plans and a contact-for-pricing option are available. Check the pricing page for current tiers.

- **Compose to your cloud:** Deploy a Docker Compose file into your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account without managing Kubernetes by hand.
- **Preview environments:** Spin up review environments for changes, including those produced by AI agents, before promoting to production.
- **Defang Station agent runtime:** Run coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex against your own Anthropic and OpenAI accounts, reachable from any browser.
- **Defang Forge engineering program:** Work with Defang engineers inside your codebase and cloud accounts to rebuild your delivery workflow.
- **AI-Native maturity guidance:** Use the published maturity model and assessment to find the bottlenecks limiting your AI return on investment.

**Strengths:** Deploys to your own cloud account, keeping data and infrastructure under your control; Uses Docker Compose, so existing container projects need little rework; Preview environments make it safer to ship agent-generated changes; Combines tooling with services (Forge) for teams that want workflow redesign, not just features

**Limitations:** Aimed at developers; there is no drag-and-drop or no-code path; You still need some cloud and container familiarity to get the most from it; Pricing for higher tiers requires checking the pricing page or contacting sales

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/defang.md)

## Rivet.dev

At its core Rivet replaces the container per agent with an in-process primitive. An Actor runs inside your existing Node.js or Bun backend rather than in its own container or VM, which is why Rivet reports cold starts measured in single-digit milliseconds and a footprint of tens of kilobytes per Actor instead of hundreds of megabytes. Each Actor carries a SQLite database for memory, can access a filesystem and shell, sleeps when idle, and wakes with its durable state ready for the next request.

The platform handles the operational pieces teams usually build themselves: fault tolerance that reschedules Actors when a node goes down, multi-region placement that routes requests to wherever an Actor currently lives, end-to-end type safety where Actor definitions generate client types, and scheduling via cron or self-set timestamps. Storage is pulled apart into two tiers — a fast SSD for instant writes and object storage that settles writes at a fraction of the cost — so running many small databases stays affordable.

Rivet positions itself as infrastructure for the "agentic era" and can be deployed as a managed cloud, inside your own VPC through a bring-your-own-cloud model, or fully self-hosted down to air-gapped networks. It is open source under Apache 2.0, backed by Y Combinator and a16z Speedrun, and integrates with popular coding agents and frameworks.

**Pricing & Plans:** Rivet Cloud uses a plan-plus-nodes model. The control plane is Free ($0) for prototyping, Hobby at $10/month, Team at $120/month, and Enterprise at $900/month, each raising control-plane redundancy, Actor Node caps, and support. Actor Nodes are billed per month on top, from $4.20 (R-5) to $94.50 (R-160). Self-hosting is free and open source under Apache 2.0, and startups from Y Combinator or a16z Speedrun get 50% off the Team plan for 12 months.

- **Durable actors with persistent state:** Every Actor gets a SQLite database and a filesystem, so an agent's memory and progress survive restarts and idle periods without a separate database.
- **Lightweight secure sandboxing:** Run untrusted or AI-generated code on your own infrastructure with fine-grained control over network access, filesystem permissions, and resource limits.
- **Fault tolerance and workflows:** A node failure reschedules its Actors elsewhere with state intact, and multi-step work replays after a crash — with no checkpointing harness to build yourself.
- **Realtime and multiplayer:** Address an Actor directly over HTTP or hold a live WebSocket, and use the React SDK to subscribe components to an Actor's state in real time.
- **One-binary deployment and observability:** Ship with a single stateless Rust binary, embeds storage in S3-compatible buckets, and emits OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs to your existing collector.

**Strengths:** Four-digit millisecond cold starts and a very small per-Actor memory footprint let a single server host far more agents; Open source (Apache 2.0) with a single Rust binary, so it can be self-hosted, run in a VPC, or air-gapped; Durable state via per-Actor SQLite plus object-storage-backed tiers keeps agents restart-safe and cheap; Strong developer ergonomics: typed SDKs, a React SDK, WebSocket networking, and OpenTelemetry baked in

**Limitations:** Requires Node.js or Bun and a working Rust-based control plane deployment for self-hosting, so it favors backend engineers over no-code users; Advanced durability and sandboxing concepts (Actors, WarpDrive storage) carry a learning curve; Managed cloud cost scales with Actor Nodes, which can climb for many mid-sized/sized nodes; Enterprise features like multi-tenancy and hardened compliance guidance sit behind sales conversations

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/rivet-dev.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Defang and Rivet.dev compare in monthly traffic?

Defang has 2,043 monthly visits, while Rivet.dev has 21,359. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Defang has a month-over-month growth rate of -49%; Rivet.dev has -44.3%.

### How does pricing compare?

Defang: Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing. Freemium-style offering with a free tier to start; paid plans and a contact-for-pricing option are available. Check the pricing page for current tiers. Rivet.dev: Freemium, Contact for Pricing. Rivet Cloud uses a plan-plus-nodes model. The control plane is Free ($0) for prototyping, Hobby at $10/month, Team at $120/month, and Enterprise at $900/month, each raising control-plane redundancy, Actor Node caps, and support. Actor Nodes are billed per month on top, from $4.20 (R-5) to $94.50 (R-160). Self-hosting is free and open source under Apache 2.0, and startups from Y Combinator or a16z Speedrun get 50% off the Team plan for 12 months.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [Modal](https://openaitools.app/tool/modal-com) | 1,196,021 | +30.2% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | Serverless cloud infrastructure for AI and data workloads | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/modal-com.md) |
| 2 | [Mastra](https://openaitools.app/tool/mastra) | 318,954 | -5% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | The TypeScript framework for building, deploying, and observing AI agents | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/mastra.md) |
| 3 | [Zeabur](https://openaitools.app/tool/zeabur) | 275,642 | -15.9% | Free Trial, Paid | AI DevOps engineer that deploys and scales your apps | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/zeabur.md) |
| 4 | [Agent 37](https://openaitools.app/tool/agent-37) | 180,030 | +24.2% | Free Trial, Contact for Pricing | The low-cost cloud sandbox where AI agents actually live | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/agent-37.md) |
| 5 | [Coder](https://openaitools.app/tool/coder) | 149,417 | -12.8% | Free Trial, Contact for Pricing, Free | Self-hosted cloud development environments and AI coding agents for enterprise teams | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/coder.md) |
| 6 | [boat](https://openaitools.app/tool/boat) | 66,870 | +520.8% | Free Trial, Paid | Persistent Ubuntu cloud VMs built for AI agent factories | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/boat.md) |
| 7 | [InsForge](https://openaitools.app/tool/insforge) | 60,257 | -11.3% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing, Free | Agent-native cloud infrastructure that lets coding agents run the whole backend stack | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/insforge.md) |
| 8 | [exe.dev](https://openaitools.app/tool/exe-dev) | 60,103 | -26.4% | Freemium, Paid | Cloud Linux VMs built for developers and their AI agents | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/exe-dev.md) |
| 9 | [FlexAI](https://openaitools.app/tool/flexai) | 44,314 | +17.9% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Build, run and scale AI, from open models to governed agents | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/flexai.md) |
| 10 | [Modelence](https://openaitools.app/tool/modelence) | 31,915 | -0.9% | Freemium, Paid | Production cloud on autopilot for full-stack and AI apps | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/modelence.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/defang-vs-rivet-dev

More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)