tl;dr Scalr is the best alternative to Terraform Enterprise if you want transparent pricing, Open Policy Agent integration or a template registry.
So you’ve evaluated Terraform Enterprise and dropped it because the cost was prohibitive? Scalr is an alternative that has feature parity with Terraform Enterprise and full CLI support. It also has some key differentiators and quality of life features that make it even better.
Key Differences Between Scalr And Terraform Enterprise
Public Pricing
For an on-premise installation of Scalr, the pricing is per workspace and a workspace will cost a maximum of $40/month. Scalr has a $25,000/year minimum spend and offers volume discounts:
- 0–100 workspaces: $40/workspace/month
- 101–500 workspaces: $32/workspace/month
- 501–1000 workspaces: $25/workspace/month
- 1001+ workspaces: $18/workspace/month
Scalr offers payment terms discounts. If you commit for 3 years, you get a 10% discount.
Example: 150 workspaces in a 3 year contract will cost (100*40+50*32)*0.9 = $5,040/month
Open Policy Agent Integration
Scalr uses OPA for policy as code instead of Sentinel. OPA is domain agnostic while Sentinel only applies to Hashicorp products. No need to have a different policy language for every service you use. OPA is the tool of choice for a unified policy framework across the cloud native stack.
Template Registry
Scalr lets users deploy preconfigured Terraform templates themselves. Users don’t need prior Terraform knowledge or going through a ticketing system.
Hierarchical Management Model
Scalr allows the sharing of objects across organizations. An object can be a VCS configuration, a policy, a variable … No need to go into each organization to create a module or a VCS provider. Scalr doesn’t charge per user per organization but per user across all organizations.
Policy Update Blast Radius
It is possible to visualize the blast radius of policy updates to your existing and future deployments with policy previews. Create a pull request against your policy code and understand the impacts in the Scalr UI. For example, admins get a list of workspaces impacted based on the policy change. Engineers have the ability to preview the impact of the new policy when deploying infrastructure.
Getting started with Scalr
Sign up for a free account on our SaaS version to make up your mind and see if Scalr meets your needs. You don’t need a credit card for that, and you can invite up to 4 team members. If you like what you see and want to move forward, reach out to us and we’ll be happy to demo Scalr to you and assist you with a POC.
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