RudderStack Cloud vs. Open Source
Compare features and setup options in RudderStack’s two product offerings—Cloud and Open Source.
If you are evaluating RudderStack in a build vs. buy context, it’s important to understand the components and features that make up the RudderStack service as they relate to your current and future needs.
This guide will help you decide the right setup based on your environment and data needs: RudderStack Cloud or RudderStack Open Source.
Comparison overview
Advanced RudderStack features are not supported in the open source version of the product.
Cloud and open source setup
To understand the effort involved in setting up RudderStack, it’s useful to take a look at RudderStack’s architecture which comprises the control plane and the data plane. These two services work together to govern the data flow between your event sources and destinations.
- The control plane refers to the front-end RudderStack dashboard where you can manage the configuration of your sources and destinations.
- The data plane is RudderStack’s core engine responsible for receiving event data and transforming it into the required destination format before relaying events to the destination.
RudderStack Cloud
With RudderStack Cloud, you get a RudderStack-hosted data plane and control plane so you need not worry about the setup. You can set up a source and destination and see the events flow within minutes.
RudderStack’s free cloud tier offers multiple sources, destinations and delivery of 1 million events per month. It provides key features like Live Events and Transformations. If you start on the cloud free tier, it’s much easier to convert to a paid plan as your needs evolve over time.
RudderStack open source
For RudderStack Open Source, you have the following data plane and control plane setup options:
Set up the data plane on Docker, Kubernetes, or in your own development environment. RudderStack will not host the data plane for you.
Set up the control plane using one of the following options:
Detailed feature comparison
Feature | RudderStack Cloud | RudderStack Open Source | Notes |
---|
Event metrics | | ❗ | - Get information on the number of events ingested during a specified timeframe.
- Applicable only for cloud mode destinations.
- For Open Source users, this feature is available only in the RudderStack-hosted control plane.
|
Event backup in your own bucket | | | RudderStack can manage it for you as a part of the Enterprise plan. |
Live Events | | ❗ | |
RudderStack-managed object storage | | | Use the RudderStack-hosted object storage to temporarily store your events before forwarding them to your warehouse destination. RudderStack does not persist any of this data. |
Event Replay | | | This is a RudderStack Enterprise feature. |
Maintaining event ordering | | | |
Transformations | | | - For Open Source users, transformations are available only in the RudderStack-hosted control plane and users can set up to 5 transformations.
- RudderStack Cloud Free and Starter plan users can set up to 5 transformations in the cloud mode. Growth and Enterprise plan users can create unlimited transformations.
- Only Enterprise users can create transformations in the device mode.
|
Reverse ETL
Feature | RudderStack Cloud | RudderStack Open Source | Notes |
---|
Reverse ETL | | | RudderStack Cloud Free and Starter plan users can set up 1 Reverse ETL source. Growth and Enterprise users can set up unlimited sources. |
Data syncs scheduling | | | - |
Models | | | - |
Data governance
Deployment and security
Monitoring and observability
Feature | RudderStack Cloud | RudderStack Open Source | Notes |
---|
Grafana dashboards for monitoring | | | Available for RudderStack Starter, Growth, and Enterprise users. |
Alerting and error notifications | | | This is a RudderStack Enterprise feature. |
Auditing and user management
Feature | RudderStack Cloud | RudderStack Open Source | Notes |
---|
Ability to add other team members in the workspace | | | You can invite up to 10 members to your workspace in RudderStack Cloud Free and Starter plan, and unlimited members in the Growth and Enterprise plan. |
Audit logs | | | This is a RudderStack Enterprise feature. |
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