Commercial
Anyport vs Porter
Porter
A supported cloud account
What your infrastructure must expose
Anyport
Nothing
No inbound port, no public IP, no reachable API server.
Porter describes itself as a platform as a service that runs in your own cloud, and its quick start is to connect a cloud account and create a cluster.
That is the whole difference in one sentence: Porter's model starts at a cloud account, and Anyport's starts at a cluster that already exists. If you have the former, Porter's migration story from Heroku is well-worn and worth reading.
01Common ground
What both of them do
This much both products do, so the table below is only about where they differ.
- A hosted control plane in front of Kubernetes you own.
- Your workloads and data stay in your own infrastructure.
- Builds from Git, revisions and rollbacks.
- Roles, an audit log and a Heroku-shaped workflow on top of Kubernetes.
02The differences
Where they differ
Each row asks one question and sets the two answers across a seam. The highlighted row is the one this comparison turns on.
| Porter | Question | Anyport |
|---|---|---|
Porter A PaaS inside your cloud account AWS, GCP or Azure. | What it is | Anyport A hosted control plane, your cluster Wherever that cluster happens to be. |
Porter Kubernetes in a supported public cloud | Runtime | Anyport Kubernetes anywhere Including bare metal, k3s and edge sites. |
Porter Hosted by Porter | Where the control plane runs | Anyport Hosted by us There is nothing for you to install, upgrade or back up. |
Porter A cloud account you connect | How it reaches your infrastructure | Anyport Your cluster connects out The agent dials us. No cloud account is involved. |
Porter A supported cloud account | What your infrastructure must expose | Anyport Nothing No inbound port, no public IP, no reachable API server. |
Porter Porter creates one in your account | Who provisions the cluster | Anyport You do, or Anyport Cloud does Never in your account: we take no cloud credentials. Anyport Cloud runs clusters on Anyport's own hardware. |
Porter $13 per vCPU a month, $6 per GB of RAM Charged on requested app resources rather than cloud instance capacity, on top of your own cloud bill. Checked 2 October 2026. | Price | Anyport $5/mo or $50/yr 3 clusters free, then $2 a month each, billed by the hour. Compute on your own clusters is never metered. |
Porter See their site | Compliance | Anyport Not certified yet Controls are published in full on the security page instead. |
03The decision
Which one to choose
Each list is written to be true. If the first one describes you, the better product is theirs.
Choose Porter if
- You are on AWS, GCP or Azure and want the cluster created and operated for you.
- You are migrating off Heroku and want a path somebody has walked many times.
- Your evaluation requires named production customers from the vendor.
Choose Anyport if
- The infrastructure is not in a public cloud, or not in one of those three.
- The cluster exists already and re-platforming it is not on the table.
- The cluster cannot be reached from outside, which rules out anything that connects inward.
- You want several clusters in different places under one console rather than one cloud account per platform.
04In their words
What Porter is
Taken from their own documentation and pricing.
Porter is documented as a PaaS that runs in your own cloud, supporting AWS, GCP and Azure, with a quick start that connects a cloud account, creates a cluster and deploys an application.
Its clearest positioning is for teams outgrowing Heroku who want the same experience on infrastructure they are billed for directly.
Its pricing page lists on-premises installation on the Enterprise plan. We did not find documentation for what that requires, so this page makes no claim about it.
05Questions
Questions people ask
Does Porter work outside AWS, GCP and Azure?
Its documentation describes it as running in your own cloud and names AWS, GCP and Azure. Its pricing page lists on-premises installation on the Enterprise plan, but we did not find documentation for what that requires. Check with them.
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. With no cluster at all, Anyport Cloud runs one for you on Pro, billed for what your apps use.
What does Anyport cost?
Three clusters are free with every feature and unlimited members, apps and projects. Pro is $5 a month with $5 of credit back each month; clusters past the free three are $2 a month each, and clusters on Anyport Cloud $5, billed by the hour. Compute on your own clusters is never metered because it is not ours, and the one counted resource there is traffic our gateway carries for clusters with no public address of their own: 10 GB a month free, 100 GB on Pro, then $0.02 per GB. A cluster on Anyport Cloud runs on our hardware instead and is billed for what your apps use, at $12 per vCPU and $6 per GiB of memory a month, from credit.
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.
Start with three free.
Connecting a cluster is one command and takes a few minutes. Three clusters are free with every feature, and the pricing page works out what yours would cost.
Read next
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