Shipping software into customer environments
Anyport vs Distr
Distr solves the same problem as Replicated at a fraction of the price, which is a real achievement and not something we compete with. It distributes your application to customers who then self-host it, with deployment agents for Docker and for Kubernetes and Helm.
Anyport is the other side of that line: you operate the clusters, and there is nothing to hand over.
What both of them do
This much is common ground, so the table below is only about where they differ.
- Kubernetes and Helm in environments you do not own.
- An agent inside the target environment, rather than a route into it.
- A free way to start, without talking to sales.
Where they differ
The short answer first, and the detail underneath it where the short answer would otherwise mislead.
| Distr | Anyport | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Distr A distribution platform For vendors whose customers self-host the software. | Anyport A control plane For operating applications on clusters your own team is responsible for. |
| Runtime | Distr Docker Compose, or Kubernetes with Helm Plus virtual machine and bare metal targets. | Anyport Kubernetes Anyport can install k3s on a bare machine if you do not have a cluster. |
| Who administers the application | Distr Your customer In their own environment. | Anyport You do From one console. |
| Where the control plane runs | Distr Their cloud, or yours Self-hosted from the same codebase. | Anyport Hosted by us There is nothing for you to install, upgrade or back up. |
| Licensing and customer management | Distr Built in | Anyport Not built |
| Building from source | Distr Not the product You bring images and charts. | Anyport Connect a repository Every push builds on your own cluster and rolls out. |
| Price | Distr From 80 dollars a month Free community edition. Business 160, Enterprise from 59,000 a year. | Anyport Free today Up to 10 private and 20 public clusters. Compute is never metered. |
| Compliance | Distr See their site | Anyport Not certified yet Controls are published in full on the security page instead. |
What Distr is
Taken from their own documentation, read on 4 September 2026.
Distr is an open-source software distribution platform for delivering applications into customers' self-hosted environments, with deployment automation, licensing, monitoring and customer management.
It has deployment agents for Docker and for Kubernetes with Helm, and targets Docker Compose, virtual machines and bare metal as well.
Published pricing is Pro at 80 US dollars a month for up to 100 customer organisations, Business at 160 dollars a month, Enterprise from 59,000 dollars a year, and a free open-source community edition.
Choose Distr if
- Your customers install and run your software, and you need to track which version each of them has.
- You want the control plane to be something you can host and read the source of.
- You need to support Docker Compose customers as well as Kubernetes ones.
Choose Anyport if
- You operate the clusters, including ones inside customer premises, and nobody else administers the application.
- You want builds, revisions, rollbacks, previews per pull request, managed databases and HTTPS, not distribution.
- You want one console over a fleet of your own clusters, with roles and an audit log.
Questions
- Does Anyport distribute software to customers?
- No. Anyport manages clusters your team is responsible for, which can include clusters inside customer premises. It has no licensing, entitlement or update-channel machinery to hand to a customer who administers the software themselves.
- What does Anyport require of a cluster?
- A Kubernetes cluster you can run one command against, or a bare Linux machine where Anyport installs k3s first. No inbound port, no public IP, no load balancer that can obtain one, and no kubeconfig handed to us. The agent opens a connection outward and holds it open.
- What does Anyport cost?
- Every feature is free today, for everyone on your team, on up to 10 private clusters and 20 public ones. Compute is never metered because it is not ours. The one counted resource is traffic our gateway carries for clusters with no public address of their own, with an allowance of 10 GiB a month.
- Is Anyport audited or certified?
- Not yet. In place of a report, the security page documents what the agent runs with inside your cluster, what crosses the boundary and how secrets are stored, so a reviewer can evaluate the controls directly. Two of them hold regardless of certification: we never receive credentials for your Kubernetes API, and your workloads keep serving whether or not our control plane is reachable.
Sources
Read on 4 September 2026. If one of these pages now says something different, the source is right and this page is stale.
If Anyport is the one you want
Connecting a cluster is one command and takes a few minutes. Everything is free today, and the pricing page lists the limits that are actually enforced rather than the ones a plan would imply.